The Death of 2D Animation - What Happened?

Don Bluth and Gary Goldman are one of the most renowned animators and had worked on animated films such as The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail and The Land Before Time.

Recently, Doug Walker, whom is known for his Nostalgia Critic persona had a chance to interview both Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. In the interview, they were asked about their feelings about modern day animation. Don Bluth replied that when the early 3DCG animated films were successful, every other studios had switch from 2D animation to 3D, resulting them looking the same. The characters felt like puppets and lost the human touch. He also expressed that 3D animated films are trying to be more realistic to the point where it looks like a live-action film.

As someone who love animation, I can understand and feel for him. 2D animated films is becoming a dying art in the west. Heck, Disney even announced that they do not have plans for 2D animated films for the next decade. This doesn't mean that there is no market for this type of animation. The success of many crowdfunded 2D animation projects such as Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's Dragon Lair Returns and Hullabaloo Steampunk by veteran Disney animators clearly shows that people still do care and appreciate for 2D animation.

With that said, why did many institutions, schools and universities stop offering traditional hand-drawn animation classes to students? Some of my classmates were also eager to learn too. We did ask one of the lecturers and he wasn't sure why 2D animation was not included in our Digital Arts course. This is sad but it did not stop me from learning hand-drawn animation myself. I hope someday I could create my own full-length animated film.

Day 12 (Week 11)

CLIENT PITCH PRESENTATION
Today was my turn to pitch my video game idea. I believed I did okay during the presentation. The problem I had was there was too much information to talked in the 5-minute time limit. I had to remove 30% of the content, resulting in some parts without proper explanation. My stage fright also made my speech to be repetitive in the beginning but I managed to calm myself down after the few slides.


From this presentation, I can see that I have somewhat improved my public speaking skills since the first group pitch.

The Future of Gaming - Mobile Games

Arcade/Video game company Konami has changed drastically for the past year beginning with the cancellation of Silent Hills, a horror game directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, staring Norman Reedus. Since then, every news from Konami has have been very controversial. I want to talk about one particular news that came out shortly after Silent Hills' cancellation. 

Back in September, a report from Nikkei had indicated that Konami was moving away from the AAA console business and that they wanted to focus more on the pachinko business in Japan, as well as the constantly budding mobile market. From a business standpoint, it is understandable why they made such decision. AAA video games are very expensive to make and it doesn't always guarantee a profit, just like Hollywood films. On the other hand, mobile games are low-cost which companies would not have to worry about losing money.

Although mobile games are sometimes profitable, the mobile game industry is a huge mess at the moment. One major problem is that these games are plague with micro-transaction. It's the very reason why mobile games are nicknamed Fee-to-Pay. Many mobile games have locked contents behind a pay wall, forcing players to spend more money to buy in-game stuff. Before you know it, the player may have wasted hundreds or thousands of pounds just to play a game. This is a bad anti-consumer business practice.

Mobile gaming also has a serious problem with copycat apps. The mobile app market has become completely inundated with applications that do nothing but copy and paste the efforts of brilliant developers for a quick buck. It’s gotten so bad that most consumers don’t even know which one was the original. The saddest part is many of these clones are so successful that the original games and their original developers have no reason to exist beyond inspiring more clones.

Day 11 (Week 10)

CLIENT PITCH RESEARCH
For the solo client pitch, we were given freedom to pitch anything as long as it is related to our Digital Arts course. The idea I decided to pitch is an action role-playing game that has a hard but fair difficulty. I used FromSoftware's Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne as the basis and starting point of my game design.

Setting: Cyberpunk Fantasy.

Story: Humanity has fallen, only despair remains. The player is one of the few remaining humans. The player decided to venture into the city of Yggdrasil, home of cybernetic research, to unravel the mystery behind the humanity's destruction, hopefully finding a cure to the cybernetic virus.

Tagline: Technology makes us human, makes us more than human, makes us human no more.

Storytelling: The story is designed from ground up to be interpreted by the player, rather than told to the player. This can be achieved through minimal and vague cut scenes, environmental storytelling, item descriptions and NPC interaction. 


Gameplay: Branching level design with inter-connecting areas via shortcuts that can be unlocked by players. Each area ends with a boss fight.  Requires backtracking, encourage players to explore. Death has consequences. Asynchronous co-op. Easy to learn, hard to master.

Target Audience: 16+ due to violence and fear.


Cost: Marketing - 40%, Art - 37%, Programming - 12%. Debug/Game Testing - 3%, Manufacturing – 2%, Others – 6%

I will prepare some simple concept art to visualize the game so the client can understand more about the game. 

Day 10 (Week 10)

LECTURE - Self-employment
Guest speaker Peter Micklewright is a freelance graphic designer. He gave us an insight on self-employment and how it differs from working for a company. It is hard to freelancing in the beginning as you need to expand your network and sell your brand  in order to gain more customers. 

Positives:
+ Flexible hours
+ Control over jobs and clients
+ Work whenever you want
+ You are your own boss
+ Keep all the profits

Negatives:
- Inconsistent workloads
- Difficult to distinguish work and personal time
- A lot of traveling
- No employer benefits
- Risk of not getting paid

Freelancing means that you have to exchange instability and the risk of failure for professional freedom. On the other hand, if you are wiling to risk your stability for something more in tune with your professional goals than a traditional job, you have the opportunity to build your name and reputation in the industry.

SEMINAR - Production schedule and hourly rate 
Peter Micklewright taught us how to manage our production schedule and hourly rate for being a freelancer. The more experienced and professional you are in your field, the higher hourly rate can be applied. The hourly rate calculation/formula he gave us was pretty complicated at first but we managed to understand it after some practices on the spot.

I was happy that this was taught to us since freelancers usually do not disclose the details on their work.

Day 9 (Week 9)

LECTURE - Online Presence 
Simon Wood from Holiday Xtras was not available few weeks ago but he managed to return and give us a lecture. His lecture was about online presence like social network profiles. He explained to us that our online presence will always affect our working life. That's why we should always maintain a good image of ourselves online. Having a large network and connection can help to sell ourselves to companies.

GUEST SPEAKER - G Forces
G Forces is a company that does automotive web software and digital marketing for automotive companies. Some of the things the showcased to us was awesome. As someone who love video games, I was excited to see the high-quality 3D models of vehicles they made. This is the only guest speaker so far that came from a company that has similarities to a video game, VFX or film studio. I love how G Forces experiments on finding different ways to integrate the 3D models into websites and applications.

This could be my potential placement as I like 3D modelling.

Day 8 (Week 8)

GUEST SPEAKER - Google User Experience Researcher
Rajiv Arjan from Google gave us an insight on Google and his role in the company. He worked as a user experience researcher. He explained that he had to do surveys and experiments in different countries so that Google can create a more user-friendly interface and experience for different cultures.

I was surprised that people from Google would come and give a talk. I'd always heard that Google was a fun and exciting place to work at because they allow their employees to try out new things. From Rajiv's experience in Google, the rumors were right. I'll probably apply google for placement and a job.

SEMINAR - Pitch 3
We pitched our Gulbenkian app to the class and the response were mostly great. I was happy that I managed to present my part without needing to read notes as I was advised not to. Ania praised me for my improvement. It really increased my confidence in public speaking.

Day 7 (Week 7)

LECTURE - Web Industry Trends
Today's lecture was about the web industry. Besides web development, I learned about the salary range for web developers and how to enter the industry. Sara also talked about the design style and codes currently used by developers. 

Although web development is not the type of job I'm interested in but it is still important to learn about the process and cost of making a website. 

PITCH DISCUSSION
My group was preparing the third pitch which was to create an interactive tool for Gulbenkian targeting at children. We went ahead and chose one of the examples given, a responsive app based on Gulbenkian's Christmas show, Snow Child. We aimed to design our app to be fun and engaging for the children. Four mini games were included in the app. Completing these mini games would reveal more information and facts on the Snow Child show such as behind-the-scenes and the author. A section for adults to buy tickets and merchandises is also included. The app was supposed to include a competition by playing the games but it was deemed too much trouble to apply. 

Day 6 (Week 5)

LECTURE - Intellectual Property Rights Part 2
The second part of the intellectual property rights lecture was about data protection, mainly for digital content. 

Although it is good that digital contents are protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998, US, there is a huge flaw for the video game industry which is that game publishers abuse the DMCA and preventing people from preserving old and abandoned games, even in museums and archives. Their reason was they considered all hacking as illegal and associated with piracy. Luckily, there are multiple groups/associations, such as Entertainment Software Association (ESA), trying to get abandoned games exempted from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions (Section 1201) by the Copyright Office in order to allow those games to be archived as historical artifacts.

SEMINAR - Pitch 2 
I felt like I did badly for this pitch. I was too nervous to get my words out, resulting in a bad speech. We were advised that we should try to present without the use of notes. Notes sometimes not helpful actually as they prevent us to show our presentation skills fully. I'll try to present without notes next time.

Day 5 (Week 4)

PITCH DISCUSSION
Second pitch was to set up a small online exhibition entitled Design in the 20th Century: Key Trends. We are tasked to find illustrations and moving images of the chosen trend and find out how much it will cost to display them to the public. We chose to do 4 decades of fashion of the 20th Century. After researching, we concluded that the cost to buy licenses use these visual images and films was almost £2000.

Day 2 (Week 2)

LECTURE - TV & Film Industry
Jane Hilton, a freelance filmmaker and lecturer, gave us a lecture which will help our first pitch. She taught us how to identify and approach the pitch, present ideas and gave us an overview of production models within TV/film companies such as job roles, funds and ownership.

The presentation had given me a broader view on film production in general.

PITCH DISCUSSION
After the lecture, my group met up to discuss the ideas we came up with. The final one we all agreed on was a film based on the infamous Jack the Ripper case. The story would be able the Ripper's point of view of the murders that took place in London. There are films that came before but their story is told from a detective's point of view. We wanted to delve into the mind of a killer.

Day 4 (Week 4)

LECTURE - Intellectual Property Rights Part 1
This week's lecture is all about intellectual property rights. Ania gave a detailed insight on copyrights mainly copyrights in the UK. This is very important to me as I have little to no knowledge on how copyright works and how to obtain one. I wonder if non-profit fan-made works based on existing intellectual property is legal or not in the west. In Japan however, fan-made works are actually encouraged because the intellectual property owners believe that these content creators will be the future of the industry.

GUEST SPEAKER - Nimble Ape
Dan Jenkins, an alumni from our university, returned and gave us a talk on developing ourselves for industry. He told us his journey from studying in university to opening his own company. Dan also explained what his company does (which was mainly web development). 

His presentation mirrored what we (the students) are going through right now and will be experiencing in the near future.

Day 3 (Week 3)

LECTURE - Future Trends
Once again, Jane Hilton gave us a talk on the TV/film but this time it is about future trends of the industry. The presentation focused on TV/film distribution and new content emerging in this internet age. The latter was more interesting because with today's technology, anyone can make video content and share them easily. For example, YouTube and Vimeo became a platform for short/indie films while Twitch is the home of streaming games. As a viewer of these content, I highly believe that these video contents will be the future of TV/film. With Activision Blizzard buying Major League Gaming (MLG), they are planning to turn it into a TV channel for gaming content, similar to how South Korea having dedicated TV channels for E-sports.

SEMINAR - Pitch 1
Today's seminar was each group pitching their ideas. The feedback for our pitch was that the Jack the Ripper story has been done too many times. Companies will most likely not invest into the idea. We were advised to do more in-depth research on our next pitch. I also need to work more on my presentation skills without the help of notes. Hopefully practice would help overcome my stage-fright.

Day 1 (Week 2)

SEMINAR
Today's seminar was to form groups and start discussing about the three pitches we will be giving in this term. The first pitch was to pitch an idea for a TV programme or film to be broadcast in the UK. My biggest problem with this pitch was that I am not familiar with British TV or what the locals usually watch. My group struggled a little as we do not know what TV or film to produce for today's British audience. So we decided to do some research on what recent UK shows are generally well-received. From information we gathered, the current trend are films based on historical or fictional events such as BBC's Sherlock. We decided to use that as our basis for our pitch.


GUEST SPEAKER - Soapbox
Farina Broadley and Stewart Brockwell, guest speakers from Soapbox, came and talk about their company and the working life in Soapbox. Soapbox is a company that work on publication design, infographics, branding, editorial, animations and web development. They also help leading policy, research and advocacy organisations to communicate their ideas. 

During the presentation, they showcased some of their portfolio, mainly web and app design. The speakers also introduced their co-workers and talked about placement/jobs, location and working life.

Overall, the presentation was engaging and enjoyable. It made the company look like a fun place to work at although what they do may not be the type of work I'm interested in but I'll still make sure to get a placement here.


GUEST SPEAKER - Eurocontrol 
To my surprise, the Eurocontrol presentation was given by a University of Kent student - Moritz Graf, who is currently working as an intern in his company. Eurocontrol is a company that manages airspace in Europe.

Mortiz talked about the placement, why he chose Eurocontrol, his job, and the introductory course for newcomers. He also told us about what he learned from working there.

His presentation was good and detailed but it was somewhat hard for me to get into it. It could be the way he spoke. Anyway, Eurocontrol is not for me as I have no interest in air control.

The Future of Gaming - Virtual Reality

A Meme of TIME's Virtual Reality Magazine Cover

With the recent announcement of the Oculus Rift pricing of US$599, virtual reality (VR) quickly became the talk and craze once again since E3 2015. For those you do not know, Oculus Rift is a virtual reality head-mounted display developed by Oculus VR.

The newness of the current technology, the price and the shovelware of virtual reality games have somewhat made me leery. All that said, I personally had try out the more affordable Samsung Gear VR and enjoyed quite a bit but I am still cynical about virtual reality as a concept. That doesn't mean I dislike it nor I think it will fail. I just can't envision virtual reality as the future of gaming in its current form.

Of course, the manufacturing cost is the most prominent huddle with Oculus Rift, costing as much as a PS3 did back in 2006. Consumers would also have to afford a high-end gaming PC that will be needed for the Oculus Rift work. The mass-market most likely would not want or able to spend that much money for something that is essentially a gamble right now. The first batch of the Oculus Rift pre-orders being sold out in 15 minutes doesn't mean that the market is ready for it because scarcity of tech products is very common and it is not a guarantee for mainstream potential.

Prohibitive issues faced by 3D TV can be found in virtual reality as well. Health problems such as eye issues, strain, migraine and motion sickness stand between customers and virtual reality. The Gear VR disclaimer even says those under age of 13 shouldn't even use it and warned against prolonged use for any age. The need of calibration, tech requirement and space requirement also make the Oculus Rift less simple to use and therefore less enticing to a mainstream audience who just want something to pick up and play.

None of this is to say that virtual reality isn't cool. I really do like the experience I've had with it. Although it gave me motion sickness for using too long, I cannot deny that I had a lot of fun.

The expensive price tag is not that shocking as new tech will always be sold at a premium price and targeted at early adopters. If Apple managed to sell smart watches for £299, the Oculus Rift will probably do okay. Even if it's not the future of gaming, it doesn't mean it can't be part of future gaming like motion control once was.

For those who cannot afford an Oculus Rift, there are other alternative products launching later this year such as Sony Morpheus, HTC Vive and Microsoft Hololens. Their launch price have not been announced as of writing. Hopefully they will be cheaper and more affordable for the mass-market.