8.BIT.BROS. - Successful 3D Match-Move Test!

Wanted to share with you guys a quick 3D match-move test I just finished. I haven't bothered to chroma-key little Carter just yet, but this is by far the most complicated of our moving green screen shots, so as you might imagine, I'm feeling pretty good about my After Effect skillzzz right about now. It's a real relief. Also, I put those boxes in for shits and giggles:

8.BIT.BROS - Sc8_Shot4_3D_Motion_Track_TEST from Rogelio Salinas on Vimeo.

Please comment and tell me what you guys think!

"How's this for a movie prop?"

Click to enlarge! More pics after the jump...

Commander Gorgo UPDATE

Heya guys and gals! As the first draft of my script nears completion, work on Commander Gorgo continues on schedule. Three weeks ago we had a few people over to the house to work on the Silicone Rubber mold for Gorgo. A few undergrads were in attendance, as well as grad school friends and Prof. Jim Glavan (he worked in the Henson Creature Shop for over 10 years!). I asked a photographer friend of mine to swing by and document. Here are his pics:

Commander Gorgo Mold-making

Enjoy!
-R

Commander Gorgo UPDATE!

Skin texture typically pushes a sculpt from "neat!" into a more organic, naturalistic rendering. Sharp needle tools are used to make "stretched" pores and wrinkles, a round ball-lookin' tool is used to make pores (thousands of 'em... very tedious), and then a citric-based solvent is used to smooth it all out and make it natural-looking... Pics of Gorgo's craggy skin after the jump...

Head-on shot of Gorgo's face. Note that the "pores" on the top left portion of the image aren't smoothed out yet with the solvent...


Side angle for light contrast.


And finally, a close-up of the skin around the eye-goggle.


Lemme know what you think, guys!
Cheers!
-R

Introducing COMMANDER GORGO!

Been a while since I've posted on the 'ole TripleChimp blog, so I figured I might as well make this a substantial post (and one I'll hopefully update as my work progresses) so apologies for the lengthy post. As you guys know, I'm currently working on my graduate thesis film here at UT Austin. It's a narrative film (no documentary again for me for a while...) about two rivaling brothers all wrapped up in a Nintendo-esque, 8-bit fantasy aesthetic. The film culminates with a drop-down, drag-out fight between the brothers which sparks my grand finale. These brothers play vids together, and have all throughout their lives. It's their arena... and all that that entails. The "last boss" of THE game they played, is a cosmonaut pig-monster named "Commander Gorgo." Gorgo goes from being, essentially, the devil on the younger brother's shoulder to his anxiety/anger incarnate. And while he appears throughout the film as an 8-bit sprite, we'll see him "in the flesh" at the end of the film. To that end, I'm currently working on a sculpt for a fully animatronic Gorgo head. He'll be around 7 ft tall when finished and only the head will be animatronic.

Here's the final design for Commander Gorgo.


Progress pics after the jump! Click on the pics for the GIGANTO versions. And remember, he'll have his cosmonaut cap once he's done...

Here he is from about five days ago. He's sporting some temporary tusks cast out of plastic resin (like the eye goggles), but they'll be replaced with tusks cast from dental acrylic for translucency and added realism.


His eyes were scratch-built out of plastic sake cups and scrap styrene, molded in RTV rubber silicone, and cast in polyurethane resin.


Here's the latest update. Been working details onto the chin and lips. His tusks were removed to make it easier to sculpt the mouth. I really want his skin to look "hard" and gnarly with creases that almost look like scar tissue.


And one final shot of the head as it stands as of the writing of this post. Right now I'm working my way up his face. Next is the nose and his cheekbones.


More updates as the sculpt progresses. Deadline for the sculpt is this friday! See you next time...

Bow down before me in ENVY!!!

Well, well, well... All the talk of Nazi zombies 'round this joint have brought this Mexican zombie out of hiding. Roy trapped me in our tool shed out back with my PS2 and a copy of TimeSplitters again, and since I'm a stupid zombie now (Thanks again, Adry!), I couldn't figure out the damned door knob. Took me a month to figure it out, but gosh darnit, here I am, free to feed on braaaaaiiiiiinsssss... Ahem. And play STREET FIGHTER IV BEFORE ALL YOU SUCKAS!


I'm gonna be a jerk about this and write a review à la Harry Knowles, tell you all about my day, what I was wearing, what I had for lunch (brains, duh), and what my Zombie poop smelled like that day (for you, Effie)... all before I even get to talkin' 'bout SFIV.

As you guys might already know, arcade cabinets for Street Fighter IV will not be released outside of Japan, at least for the time being. Any cabinets found elsewhere are illegal, and arcades found out are subject to huge fines, believe it or not... There may be a few cabinets legally distributed to Korea and Australia in a month or two (I think), but that's besides the point. Now, only a handful of cabinets made it to the states (again, illegally). And holy hot damn, if there ain't three in Austin! Arcade UFO is now one of my favorite places to hang out. Click on the hyperlink for directions and more...

I shouldn't be at all surprised that more than a few of my colleagues in the grad film program here at UT Austin are huge Fighter fans... beginning with my roommate Roy. We've spent countless hours beating up on each other, and it's always great to release some stress. Moreover, I've improved drastically since playing with Roy on a regular basis. Just as stone sharpens stone, Roy has... sharpened... err. Nevermind.

So I've been buggin' Roy to go with me to Arcade UFO since I found out they had a copy of SFIV and he finally conceded. I started off the evening at the Hole in the Wall. Tossed back a pitcher or two of Fireman's #4 and tried to convince a few friends I ran into at the bar to join us for Fighter. No takers. But that was fine. I was too jazzed to care.

Now, the arcade... this place is a converted laundromat. It's dinky, it's cramped, but holy crap, I've never seen nicer arcade cabinets. Most, if not all, of the monitors are now HD, there are imported Japanese games that I never would have seen otherwise, and the dudes that hang out there mean business. Arcade sharks. The kind of sharks that hover over your shoulder, watch you play for 5 - 10 min, plunk in their quarters, and then proceed to hand you your butt (presumably because they know your style from watching). Awesome stuff. But, finally, on to the game.

Surprisingly enough, there wasn't too long a wait for SFIV. They have a neat setup that let's 3 people play at a time. Gone are the days of rubbing shoulders up against your opponent. This setup has three different cabinets, one per player, that are networked to cycle through. Machine A fights against machine B while machine C plays the computer. If Machine A wins, then it matches up against machine C while machine B plays the computer, and so on. Very cool system (You get your own HD screen and plenty of room to play). Even cooler still, the machines are back to back, so you don't get to see your opponent. All very mysterious.

I haven't had that much video-game-induced adrenaline pumping through me in years... Of course, I'm sure the beer didn't hurt, either. And I didn't do too bad for myself. Out of 30 matches, I probably won about 10. Not bad for a SFIV virgin.

The Graphics: Just like the rest of you guys, I've spent the last couple of months looking at screen grabs and videos from the game. I did NOT like what I was seeing. SFIII: Third Strike had some beautiful 2D sprite animation. Aesthetically, the game was moving towards a more naturalistic representation of the characters, and now SFIV was gonna cartoon-y it all up. Well, I've been converted. Despite ridiculously goofy images like this one...


The graphics just fit. Especially with the new animation style. It's hyper-kinetic and very much "anime." I got chills watching Zangief lumber "big-boy" style towards me the few times I played against the computer... just his "walking forward" animation alone! And Blanka looks even more savage as his green, rippled stomach quickly pumps in and out with every breath, like the wild animal he is. Good stuff. Special moves are appropriately flashy and the inkblot theme works beautifully, too.

The Gameplay: Oh boy... where to begin. The timing is different. It's definitely going to take a while for fans of the series to nail the timing on this new iteration. Things are... curt. Staccato. Jumps, in particular, seem really sharp. Quick up, and much quicker down without really spanning too long a distance. Does that make any sense? Took me about 3-5 matches to really get into the swing of it. But once I did, it was pure Fighter fun.

There are only a few more things I'll mention here. New gameplay mechanics do indeed enhance the tried-and-true Street Fighter formula, most notably the "focus attack." Pressing both middle punch and middle kick, makes your fighter of choice turn all inkblotty. He/she changes their stance, going into a slow "I'm about to beat your ass" animation. Reminded me very much of Yoshimitsu's critical stab attack from Tekken. Okay, so... great. But here's the cool part. The longer you hold down the two "middle" buttons, the stronger your attack will be. Of course it takes excellent timing, but if you execute the move to it's fullest potential, it's entirely unblockable! Even cooler still, and this might be a bit tricky to explain... if you start the focus attack, you can cancel out of it by dashing forward or back. But, inevitably you're going to take a hit while you charge up the focus attack. You're essentially a sitting duck if you commit to the move. So, here's the neat part. If you take a hit, you will lose life, but on your life bar, the lost life doesn't disappear, but rather grays out. If you don't pull off the focus attack, or you let your opponent hit you again, then that grayed-out life is lost. If the focus attack is successful, it regenerates! Very, very satisfying to pull this one off...

Other than that, there are the standard Super Combos (ex, double hadouken and a punch), an Ultra Combo, which I haven't quite figured out yet, and when you do a regular special move but use two attack buttons (ex, hadouken with both jab and middle punch), it makes you flash yellow as it's executed, but, again, I have no idea what this does and I'm too lazy to research online...

The Sound: Eh... it was too loud in the arcade to really make anything out. Pretty sure the jams are solid, though.

So, all in all, an awesome experience. Game ships for the home consoles on Feb. 17th. Start stretchin' out those thumbs now, kiddos...

Fallout Love

Yo!  ZombieR stopping in for a quick post, here...  So Adry's really been spreading the Fallout 3 love around this joint.  So much so, in fact, that it was HIS review that lead me to purchase this incredible game.  There's little that I disagree with in Adry's review.  He's pretty spot on.  And he's right about the ungodly time-suck this game has become for me.  "Just a quick quest" so easily turns into a 6-hour game-a-thon.  This being my first real venture into games of this genre (adventure/rpg/action), I have to say that the breadth with which Bethesda Studios has created a truly living, breathing virtual world is remarkable. Forget GTA...  It was a breathtaking (and intensely intimidating) experience catching your first glimpse of the Capitol Wasteland... "You mean I have to explore this?!?" To make a long story short, I'm in love. Some personalized Fallout 3 fun after the jump...

                      

                          Handsomest devil in the Capitol Wasteland?

You have to love the character customization features in Fallout 3.  Don't think I've ever gotten so close in any other game.  Plus then I found some specs in-game...  Icing on the cake!  If I re-grow my mustache, I'll make the appropriate adjustments to my in-game avatar.  Pretty great resemblance, though, no?  Better than my Mii, anyway...