Hey, want to make an animated movie, but you don't know how to start? First of all, you need a good idea. Good ideas are hard to find, but you could always steal one from someone more talented than you. Found a good idea? Very good. Now take good care of it, over time that idea will turn into a story almost by itself.
Update: Based on comments from Adam Novak, this article has been updated to better reflect how the video memory range works. You can check out his working emulator (written in c) here.
Angry Birds may have lost its first place grip in the iTunes App Store, but it still reigns supreme on the NOOK. And starting today, for a limited time, Angry Birds addicts with a NOOK Color can visit any Barnes & Noble retail location to unlock the free playable character, Mighty Eagle.
Story, Characters, and Structure Note:
This page is great and very informative about making interesting and lasting characters that will surely add to your already well thought out story.
Julián Dorado is an illustrator and graphic designer, hailing from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has been lauded for his character design project, which merges typefaces into font-inspired monsters, animals, and characters. Luckily, Julián has been kind enough to post a great tutorial on creating your own typeface character/creature on his behance page.
The Power of One is one of those books that I really should have read years ago. I’ve certainly meant to read it for a long time so this was a satisfying title to cross off my list. It’s stunning that this was Bryce Courtenay’s first novel. I look forward to reading his others because if this is where he started, he’s a talented writer.
In this article, I'll show you how to create a simplistic AES python based text encryptor. You'll need python 2.7 and PyCrypto (found here). The code is fairly simple, a user enters an encryption key (which basically tells the program how to scramble the text, using an algorithm), then the text to be encrypted. The program takes the key and text and inputs it into the "cryptograph" or code-based algorithm from PyCrypto. PyCrypto can use 16, 24, or 36 character encryption keys, but for the sak...
Dead Island (PC, PS3, 360) had the worst launch of any game in recent memory. The wrong version of the game was released on PC, matchmaking was down for three days on PC, saves were deleted without notice making people start from scratch, and the Feminist Whore (a file found describing one of the character's skills) fiasco. The game just wasn't ready for release.
Localizing a game is a task many do not fully understand. Not only do localizers have to translate the games they work on into a different language, but they have to translate it into a different culture as well. Oftentimes art assets, plot elements, and menu systems are changed to suit regional sensitivities. Japanese media tends to have their common drunkard characters removed or censored in American versions, for example.
World of Warcraft has been on top of the world for seven years. No other MMO has come close to challenging its dominance of the genre, and it has generated billions of dollars for Blizzard. They have spent a lot of money adding more and more content, to the extent where the full game with all the expansion packs takes up 65 GB of hard drive space. It is a beautiful game; well balanced, and a milestone in the history of the medium.
Hope I win.
Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is one of the best multiplayer games of all time. It took nine years to make, and the developers have supported it with more post-release free updates than any other game ever. Four years after its release in 2007, it is still immensely popular, and although its price has gone down, Valve has managed to continue making a massive profit by introducing the first successful microtransaction model in a mainstream American shooter. That model has been so successful that it lo...
Been hacked once? Twice? Maybe more? You thought abc123 was the only password that is both 6 characters wide and easy to remember? I have some suggestions in store for you. Just read on...
Love this Rubik's Cube stamp with movable type Chinese characters by Shaun Chung. Chung laser-etched the characters from wood, and then adhered them to a regular Rubik's Cube to create verses from a traditional Chinese text.
Hey everybody, This feed is about the traditional three act structure when writing an action/adventure story or screenplay.
Finished Act 1 (3 total) of Red Dead Redemption and it was disappointing. The act is divided into five important people who you have to do missions for in order to progress the story. Around five missions per person on average. Only Bonnie and the Marshall's story missions felt tied to the storyline. Dickens, Seth, and Irish's missions felt like they added nothing but padding to the game. Add that nothing that you do in the game affects the world around and it's like you never existed in the ...
Kiss Ass Game First Impressions Review of the game next week. Here are some quick impressions of the game and the first level
This Flash tutorial gives detailed steps for creating and animating a character. Use Flash to draw and animate.
If you're bass fisherman, then you know that the lipless crankbait is the bait you want in your fishing box. It's great for catching roaming fish chasing bait fish. However, there is an alternative you could use— a square-billed shallow running crankbait. They both are used in the same situations, but sometimes the billed crankbait will outperform the lipless crankbait. Wade Bourne of MyOutdoorTV shows you more about the square billed crankbait in this video.
Like a great acting performance, making a really good game is all about choices. While creating or playing a game, those involved have to constantly make small choices that will affect the outcome, either positively or negatively. And the only thing worse than choosing wrongly is not choosing at all. Too many games, especially today, stick to what they're supposed to do from the get-go and avoid making difficult, small, meaningful choices to differentiate themselves and make their performance...
Setting up shadows takes just as much time and attention as setting up lights. You can think of all of your illumination as one half of your lighting design, and shadows as the other, equally important half. Shadows can add richness to the tones and shading of your image, tie elements together, and improve your composition. Besides their artistic importance, rendering shadows is a key technical area to master. This chapter will explore both the visual and the technical sides of shadows and oc...
So much goes into making a film. Take a look at just the conceptual art that was created for the new Johnny Depp movie, Pirates of the Caribbean 4. These characters are going to be awesome to see on the big screen.
"It seems that artist Iain Heath is quite enamored with her as well, as he’s decided to turn her Tron Legacy character Quorra into an awesome LEGO model. At only 12 inches tall and made of blocky LEGO bits, the model doesn’t exactly capture Olivia Wilde’s character in all her glory, but it’s remarkable nonetheless. Looking almost like pixel art due to its small scale, it still packs a ton of detail, from the black bob haircut to the design of the light cycle suit covering her body. Of course,...
Johnny Knoxville working in fast-food as the elderly man character he does so well. He works slow, he drops food, picks it up, serves it to customer while customer witnesses. He falls asleep while in the middle of cleaning tables. He takes drive-through orders and can’t get it right. He eats the food off of customer orders. Basically, the premise is to anger the customers. And/or Chris Pontius works in a sub-way style restaurant where people move down a line adding items to their order. His c...
Finally. A cross-over between Street Fighters and Tekken characters! It's actually two games, not just one. From the OP in the Neogaf Thread:
A first hands look at the first chapter of the game. "When the wife of best-selling writer Alan Wake disappears on their vacation, his serach turns up pages from a thriller he doesn't remember writing. A dark presence stalks the small town of Bright Falls-"
Poland 1962
We are so psyched and psychopathed about the upcoming screening in Denver on April 15th. This will be the second year for me, ford austin, to appear as a special guest at the Starfest Horrorfest Convention and I can't wait! The fans at Starfest are rabid. Think about it....you will never go to a convention called Drama-Con or RomantiCon will you? Noone is going to dress like your character and ask you for you autograph if you play some lonely douchebag in a Jennifer Lopez movie. they wil...
This past Friday, LG held their annual Mobile World Cup (re: publicity stunt), a speed-texting competition. Two Korean teenagers were named fastest and most accurate texters, raking in $100,000 in championship money. America came in second, with a $20,000 cash prize.
Want to be a puppeteer when you grow up? Watch this how-to video and learn as our host John Kennedy gives insider tips on how to develop your puppet character, make your puppet move and perform in front of an audience. All you need is a puppet, a huge imagination, and the helpful tips in this video tutorial. Be a puppeteer.
This tutorial explains how to create lip sync and facial animations in Maya on a figure. This is an important skill to have if you plan on becoming a character animator. Create lip sync animations in Maya.
This tutorial shows you how to create a working piston in Maya. The key is to use constraints so that as one piece moves, the others move accordingly. Even if you don't want to make pistons, this is a good constraint example(something essential to creating skeletons and rigging characters). Create a working piston using Maya.
How to create a Mii in the likeness of Keanu Reeves' character Neo from the movie The Matrix using the Nintendo Wii. Create a Neo Mii on the Wii.
In this video tutorial, CreativeCOW leader Aharon Rabinowitz shares some animation techniques for character lip-syncing in Adobe After Effects. This is not just the simple method of using open- and closed-mouths -- rather, Aharon covers the more advanced use of phonemes, which are the different mouth shapes formed by a person when making various sounds in a spoken language. Lip-sync in After Effects.
Mark Schoennagel, senior 3D animator at Softimage|XSI, shows how to use the Generalized Attribute Transfer Operator (GATOR) in XSI to transfer UV coordinates and shape animations to and from completely different characters. Transfer UV coordinates and shape animations in XSI.
This video shows you how to use the InDesign Find/Change command. You learn how to search for characters and formats in text, and search for attributes and effects in objects, glyphs, and patterns. You also learn how to save a search to reuse later. Use the Find/Change command in InDesign.
Here's another delicious Byte. Ucha Gobejishvili, a Georgian Security Researcher under the handle of longrifle0x, discovered two cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities on the official website of Forbes. He discovered the hole in two different locations on the site, and has already informed the website of the vulnerability.
Shadows of the Dammed (360/PS3) is a polarizing game. It's not shy of being crass and crude. Go ahead and judge the game by the following examples (click to enlarge):
