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Animation blog one
Hey guys, welcome to the first Magic Staff animation blog! I will be posting multiple of these as time goes on, and as I progress. For this project, we were given pretty much entire creative license. At the start of the trimester, I thought it would be really cool to get a helmet like the one the bad guy in The Witcher 3 (CD Projekt Red, 2016), (all spiky, etc.), and animate it to become futuristic. However, as I progressed throughout the trimester, I found myself become disillusioned about this idea. So, I went ahead, trawled google images for ideas. And google, with its wonderful advertiser ID, showed me a magic staff from RuneScape. Now, it looked pretty horrible, which is to be expected, as it came from RuneScape (Jagex, 2016), but it got me thinking. Thus, I began sourcing all sorts of photos on magic staves, from films, movies and some book covers! One thing I found, I love Dragon Age Inquisitions staff work, that is fine stuff right there. Once I had a fair smorgasbord of pictures, I began 3D modelling, just to test the actually ‘doability’ of this. Turns out, your basic staff is pretty simple. So far, I have the staff base (a cylinder, nothing special), a kind of gold filigree…thing (I got a helix spline, fattened it and made it fit the staff base), and a crystal on top. One thing that’s annoying me at the moment is that the crystal looks weird no matter how I size it. If I make it small, it looks puny, but if I make it large it dominates the staff and looks unrealistic. Im gonna have to experiment with this! That’s my progress so far. Im sorry, I cant show screenshots this week, due to computer weirdness, but I promise they will arrive next week. Have fun! Peter Carey Dracon Interactive References: CD Projekt Red. (2016). The Witcher 3 [Game]. n.p.: Bandai Namco Entertainment. Jagex. (2016). Runescape [Game]. n.p.: Jagex.
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Hello again everybody! Time for another blog J Topics for discussion;
These Blogs. There has been some question as to wether these blogs would continue once the animation is done. I just want to clarify that they most definitely will be! Animation is part of the reason that these were made, but not nearly the sole reason for their existence, so expect more on the horizon! Dragon Lands The label for this is actually pretty misleading. You see, the first piece of news about Project Dragon Lands is that we seem to have sourced an appropriately awesome name! Eternal Ember is a name that we feel captures key areas of the story line, while also transmitting the feeling we wish to impart to the player. So for all blogs after this time, that is what it will be referred to as J As for progress, we have quite a lot. Work has continued on the side for this project, yet it still seems to get the most done with the fewest hours incorporated! Eternal Ember now has Dragon Flight, Character Creation, rudimentary Saving, Enemy AI (Basic) and Player Combat! This is a pretty hefty set of mechanics, so we think that its about time to start sharing these with you. Yep! Within the month, we will be hosting a build version of Eternal Ember on the website, for you to grab and play with. Once you have it, we would love to hear feedback, and constructive criticism! Fatal Core Now this is where my hours are going. Fatal Core has only a few more weeks left in production! As promised, once production is finished we will be hosting a copy of the game, with all contributing artist’s references, on the website! I am very proud of how far this project has come, and can’t wait to share it with you! Keep a look out for @PlayFatalCore on twitter for more updates. Emails An early initiative, but one that is starting to take hold! On the Dracon Interactive home page, you can now sign up to our soon to be released email list! This will include monthly updates and exclusive offers on things like beta access and final products! More Animation?!? It’s true, as my university is coming to an end, I have another series of animation blogs to post. However, there was a fair bit of clutter with Dracon news and Animation blogs in the previous posts, so if you want to see these blogs, I will be constructing them in a new blog series! Keep an eye out if you’re interested, the current project is a magic staff, might end up using it (probably not, it is unbelievably low quality). Okay, that seems to be it! Thanks for reading guys, I'll put some screenshots of progress at the end, just for you! (There may be a slight delay where only a few will appear. By the end, there will be about 5-6 :P) Peter Carey Dracon Interactive Hey Guys! Time for the latest in Dracon Interactive news, and the (curiously) continued animation blog! So, i'll address the poorly animated elephant in the room. Last blog, i forgot about the post assessment one animation blogs, so I MAY have stated that the anim blogs had ended. My bad. Total my bad. These ones are more progress based, less factual, so...enjoy? News first though. I have been posting fairly regularly on Twitter (@DraconInt) about Project Dragon Lands MK - III. Yes, this is a thing. MK - II is sooooo 6 months ago. But seriously, this iteration of the Dragon Lands workflow has been the most successful so far, aesthetically and functionally. Examples? I now actually have a target aesthetic! It's kind of a Diablo-ish dark medieval awesomeness. Not descriptive, I know but I am not the man to talk to about graphical terms. I have it in my head however, and heres a screenshot of my progress on the first level 'The Docks'!.  So, that's coming along well :) Aside from the aesthetics of this, I am also working hard on making every mechanic in this game perfect, from the camera, to the animations, to the chests. For the current time I am focussing on a central mechanic that I am keeping secret (because it's awesome and I want to show you guys a working version to totally shock you into awesomeness). However, work continues on narrative as well, as it underpins this game in a big way. Other than this? Work on Hero Rising has been halted for the moment. Not abandoned, we are simply reaching the crux of my trimester where I can't juggle as much. Even Dragon Lands progress will slow. If you wish to see what I am working on at university, visit @PlayFatalCore on Twitter! It's pretty cool :) That's all for basic news! Now, for animation. Progress has gone awesomely. The mesh looks awesome, the UV FINALLY figured itself out and the textures have too! My main stumbling blocks here were simple barricades of ignorance. Things like, not knowing how to set up controllers, not knowing the correct viewport settings, all that kind of stuff. All, in all, however, progress has been good! I'm going to upload the finished render to YouTube when I'm done, then put the result on a blog here, so keep an eye out. I still want to add some stuff like lighting, and scene components, as well as altering an area of the animation. I had to shrink the roof of the chest to start the "empty chest" animation, and it looks janky AF, so I will be remedying that, either by changing or deleting that part of the animation. Okay, thats it! thanks for listening guys, have a good one! Peter Carey Founder - Dracon Interactive |
AuthorMy name is Peter Carey, and I founded Dracon Interactive. 
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