So my brother just logged into our shared youtube account for the first time in nearly a year. This account was never something serious in the least, it was a place for us to make terrible edits of media to make bad jokes (known as YouTube Poops). Super cringey, super bad editing skills, nothing really original to speak of (but still within fair use I believe). Still, creating these terrible cringey videos, which now have thousands of views (who knows how?) was one of the best things I ever did.
Goofing around in artistic fields is pretty much the best way to improve at first. Of course later on you would want to do more structured and strategic learning, like actually focusing on specific techniques and everything. However, to start, just goofing around is great. When we first got our video editing software, my brother and my cousin and I had tried to make "more serious" videos before, and I got very perfectionistic, controlling, and frustrated. After taking a break, my brother proposed the idea of making these types of edit videos instead, and it was a great change. If something looked bad, it was okay. The videos were never meant to be perfect, just fun. And this got me over my fear of mistakes or not always making something flawless. Now, I've returned to actual original content making with videos - though I wouldn't say it's more serious - and my editing skills have definitely improved. I edit videos that my brother and his friend make together, and it's much more enjoyable, and since I learned so much about the software when making those goofy videos before, plus the editing education I got from class, I now feel a lot more qualified to edit videos. Yes, maybe I don't have any videos I would be proud to show on a portfolio, but I now have the skills that I need in order to start making work that would be higher quality. This idea applies to more areas of art than just videos though. Personally, I experience burnout and loss of motivation quite a bit right now in my life, and making art that is more silly or just plain weird usually helps me since it breaks me out of the monotony of constantly trying to produce perfection that others will view. Also, it can help you get over that frustration in first learning since if your art is supposed to be silly, you're less worried about whether or not it's very good. A lot of people stop drawing because they feel that they aren't as good as those around them, or aren't improving fast enough, and I think I may have done the same with video editing had it not been for goofing around with my brother. Again though, making completely silly art all the time is highly unlikely to ever make you great, but it is a good first step. After that I do agree that more formal tutorials and training are what help you hone your skills, so after starting with goofy stuff, it is good to transition into actual learning. I think I want to try to find a bit more of a balance where I learn to incorporate smaller silly elements into my work while still making something original and artful. This could be things like practicing character poses but putting the characters into silly costumes, or adding a dog into a piece, but overall I just want to find the balance between fun and still learning important skills.
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Since we just finished our AV unit, and are now moving into a 3D unit - and just because I really like animation - I wanted to do some research on the actual process that goes into making a 3D animation and how it differs from normal film production. According to this article and this article, both types of film can still easily be split into pre-production, production, and post-production and be fairly similar to each other.
Pre-Production: Both films require planning and storyboarding at this stage. With animation, it also requires character sketches, but that isn't too different from sketches of the sets and costumes that need to be done in live-action film at this stage. Production: 3D animation requires modeling, rigging, and texturing at this point. You get to control how you character moves and control their every movement, which is very different from normal film. However, in live-action film there are people who have to design and paint sets, create costumes, and control the lighting, so those aspects aren't so different from setting up a movie set. Another difference is rendering. In 3D animation, you have to make sure everything, every movement and texture, is perfect before rendering it to be an actual video clip. Film sort of has this when actors rehearse to make sure that their performance will be good, but there is a little more flexibility there since it takes only a few minutes to shoot a shot five times, but can take an hour to render one scene (depending on computer speed of course). Post-Production: Here there are virtually no differences. Both films require editing clips together to form a coherent story, checking audio timing and quality, and adding any effects as needed. I like that there are a lot of parallels between these two things, but we're in a game design class, so how does animation in games compare? This article points out that, aside from cutscenes, when you do 3D animation in a game, it has to look good from all angles. This makes sense since the player is in control of the camera and which way they are facing. It also mentioned how you need more cyclical character animations than you do in film because of the nature of games. When the code calls up that animation, it better look nice and fluid for as long as it goes on. It seems like there is a lot of pressure on game animators to get things done in time, keep them looking nice, but not have graphics that are too challenging for the system and not spend too much time on one movement. I think generally I would like working on animated film or cutscenes more than gameplay animations, but I think it will be interesting to try out soon. Since we are working with film, something that in the game design world is mostly used for in game cutscenes and game trailers, I wanted to make a blog post about marketing.
Obviously, marketing is incredibly necessary for any game, because you have to get an audience. However, with the rise of social media as a platform for marketing, it seems like a lot of times people get bogged down in how many people like their media. Of course it's nice to get a lot of attention, and important to know which marketing techniques are most effective for you, but feeling down about an ad or other piece of media not being so well recieved is not going to fix the problem. As much as people are passionate about their own work, in marketing you need to take a step back and remember you are just trying to sell something. You can use your passion to help do this, but you also have to have thick enough skin to accept the failures, get back up, and try another tactic. That being said, some social medias, like Instagram have some very cool features to help people market whatever is on their page. It has a "business insights" tool, which allows you to pay for promotions, but also just get data on your audience's ages and genders, as well as which posts reached more people. You can't get that kind of data from putting up a flyer, so I think it's very cool. I don't think using social media as a way to advertise will go away, nor do I think it needs to. I think professionalism and persistence need to be employed though, but I think it would be awesome to see more Instagram accounts for indie game developers who show progress as they develop their game and advertise. Working with audio and video - while it does share many similarities in principles - may seem a step away from game design, until you consider game trailers. Advertizing games, especially in today's world, is incredibly important, and a fairly effective way to do so is by creating a trailer. The Mario Odyssey trailer released by Nintendo at E3 has over 22 million views, with the "music video" they made as promotional material coming in at 14 million. Of course, Nintendo isn't a gauge of how effective this form of marketing is for the average game maker, but anyone can post on Youtube for free, and even if only 20 people see it, that's 20 more people who know about your game, which could be 20 more conversations about it or 20 more copies sold.
Obviously demos are probably the most effective way to show off a game since it allows the player to experience a taste of the game, but that means that you want a completed, bug free section that they can play that out of context will represent and hype up the rest of the game. Thus, video trailers can be more effective for displaying games that take place in multiple environments that greatly vary, or for aspects of the game that are still a little buggy some of the time but will be fixed before release. Of course, this isn't to say edit the video to make it look like you have a non buggy game and then release something that won't even run, but it is saying it gives you control over what you get to show and lets you give the player a taste of the whole game's atmosphere rather than an in depth look at one specific moment of game play. Again, as stated earlier, distribution is also easier. People are more likely to view a quick online video than download a shady link in order to demo a game that they've never heard of. Of course using both methods in tandem is also possible, and probably the most effective route, although it may be a bit more time consuming seeing as you have to edit a whole video and create a demo, which most of the time won't end up in the final game in the form it was in for the demo. Whatever way you choose, advertizing is so important because game making is becoming extremely popular, and ads are the best way to prove to people your game isn't just another weird app store game that doesn't function. So talking about A/V, what makes a good game trailer? This article from Games Radar talks about some professional game trailers and the things that they do well. First, the author emphasizes that a good trailer sells the idea of the game, and doesn't waste time on anything that isn't going to grab your attention. In all of the examples that he uses, he focuses on how the trailer appeals to the target audience, again, only pointing out main features that are going to get that audience interested and not wasting time on smaller aspects that are still in the game, but just not the focus. I like his statement of selling the idea of the game, because that's what really makes people want to experience it. It values both the concept and the execution, which is really cool. I kind of hope that we get to create game trailers because I think it will only continue to be important in the game industry, even just as an exercise for solidifying a game concept. We just finished our audio editing unit in class, and will soon be moving into video. So, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the audio unit and see how the skills we've learned there will help as we move into video, and that's what this post will be about.
I can't say that I felt that I learned a lot of new material this unit, but it certainly did give me a lot of much needed practice with audio, because you need a lot of practice to be good at it even though it seems simple enough. Though I definitely still need more practice, I think I got much better at timing, which is incredibly important. This article lists other tips and tricks, and I think that these assignments really did help me get the hang of how to use different tools and methods, many of which are listed in the article. It also emphasizes understanding how different effects on the audio clips affect each other. I definitely had to pay attention to that, especially while working on the audio book project, so I think that the practice was very valuable. Now the question is, how valuable will it be moving into the video unit? Obviously the two are very closely related as seen in the abbreviation A/V. This article on common mistakes in video editing makes it seem like many of the basic principles are the same. It emphasizes finding cohesiveness, focusing on transitions, and trying to keep things as clean and clear as possible. In fact, two of the tips are even focused on audio. However, this also raises the point that in video editing you have to focus on two different sense coming together. You're still very focused on the audio, but now it also has to match a picture on the screen rather than just the picture in your audience's brains. This makes timing again incredibly important, as well as cohesiveness. Basically though it just seems like adding another layer on top of what we just learned, so I think in the end audio editing principles will be very valuable in this next unit.
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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