IP Incubator Club Thread 2013: Monthly-011: -November 2013

#21

CONCEPT NAME : Pole Force One
WEBSITE : www.combomash.com/pole-force-one/
PRODUCTION BLOG : www.combomash.com/category/production-blog/
CATEGORY : Video Game (PC, MAC, Linux, OUYA)

PROJECT DESCRIPTION :

In this tongue-in-cheek, co-op, beat 'em up game, you play as one of three sexy super-hero pole dancers as they travel the world fighting against injustices such as sex-slavery, violent drug lords, religious extremists, corrupt governments and greedy corporations. Along with the help of their trusty DJ and his robotic creations, you’ll be thrown into a wacky adventure reminiscent of many classics - such as Double Dragon, Streets of Rage and Battletoads - but with modern polish and gameplay.

More details in our PDF Pitch Bible

STATUS NUMBER : 8
TEAM MEMBERS : 1 core + 3 freelance

Grant Moore (Me) - Pretty much everything, except…
Chris Taylor - Concept Art
Kris Hammes - 3D Character Artist
Power Up Audio - Music & SFX

NEXT MILESTONE : Kickstarter Campaign Launch, February 2014

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS WEEK

Managed to finally knock out some initial animations and get all of the play states rigged up. It’s a little rough and need some fine tuning, but I’m going to truck on ahead and worry about “polish” a little later. Need to keep getting features knocked out… it’s a prototype after all (I tend to get caught up in finessing things too early)

WHAT WENT WRONG THIS WEEK

A few things took longer than I was expecting, I had some difficulties with properly baking out the animations and getting them to work in Unity which I had not encountered before. Just annoying little bugs that ended up wasting a couple days. Lesson learned, plan for “fixing shit” when estimating time budgets. Also had a video card burn out on my PC, which is annoying because I’m surviving off my savings right now and minimal contract work. Oh yeah, and my concept artist seems to have disappeared on me, though I’ve had another volunteer offer to help me out in that respect. Ah well, the show must go on!

SHOW AND TELL

//youtu.be/VGXAkvgglyU

http://www.combomash.com/leaps-bounding-boxes/

#22

@daraand - That’s awesome that you are getting to go around a promote your series. Are you hoping to commercialize it? Pitch it as a web series or perhaps a TV cartoon? Curious what your plans are for it.

@redCigarette - I’ve probably said this before, but I love the style. It’s somehow right in between realism and cartoon, hard to describe. I’m going for a bit more on the cartoon side myself, but hoping to add a touch of detail like you have. Do you create everything yourself or do you make use of any stock assets? I’m probably going to have to use a lot of stock for my environments, but just curious what you do.

@Pyke - Keep it up man, I’m very confident you will succeed at getting your goal! I tried out the demo and while it was a little rough in places (I understand, just an alpha) I definitely liked the mood, style and could see the story being very interesting with time.

#23

@GrantMoore: I still think this game looks like it should be “21 Jump Street” + “Final Fight”.

#24

@daraand,

After that we’ll be off to the Austin Comic-Con and showing off more Ray & Clovis; we even have a little session we’re hosting!

That’s just great. Good luck. As for the web series itself, its’ shaping well. I do feel though you can save time and be more productive with more simpler looking rendering. (I mean it doesn’t have to be shaded, could be just flat toon kind of shaders)As I feel your series is more about the funny script. I noticed your youtube channel has another series going on called movie hoppers. Is that done by same team too? That’s pretty good too.

@grantmoore3d,

@redCigarette - I’ve probably said this before, but I love the style. It’s somehow right in between realism and cartoon, hard to describe. I’m going for a bit more on the cartoon side myself, but hoping to add a touch of detail like you have. Do you create everything yourself or do you make use of any stock assets? I’m probably going to have to use a lot of stock for my environments, but just curious what you do.

Thanks!I am spending quite some time to create my textures. Basically just starting with photo real textures and blending them with filters and hand made strokes. As for assets, I use stock models for most basic things. (Vehicles, basic buildings etc.) All the story specific assets are created from scratch though.

http://www.combomash.com/leaps-bounding-boxes/

That’s looking really good. I like the rendering and overall movements. Can’t wait for more.

#25

@Pyke,

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Okay I finished whatever I could. I couldn’t go further than the toilet flush thing though :hmm:

Here are my thoughts:

Goods :
-For an alpha it’s damn good. I was totally immersed instantly.
-It constantly kept reminding me of Bioshock.
-The environments, lighting and ambiance is very well done.
-There was always this sense that something terrible is right at the corner. (Which is really good!)
-The intro cinematics is great, the flashback cut scenes even better. I hope they are more such scenes.
-Cayne Corporation advertisements all around are awesome.

Room for improvements:
-I feel there was too much image compression going on. Perhaps it was something else, but on my 24’ monitor things are looking little distorted.
-The animations need polishing. Also, clicking seems to be little broken? Sometimes I click and the guy still doesn’t know where to go.
-The sound even though placed at right moments, again has varied compression maybe . Some sound effects sound perfect while others seem to have quality issues. (I am pretty sure it will all be fixed once you have enough funding for sound)
-I felt you can have more dialogues (May be there are, and that would be awesome). But every now and then, protagonist can say a little more. To me, it keeps me involved in the game.
-IMO, you can probably take away the credits in the intro and save them for the end. Also, you can probably use less particles and smoke right on the camera lens.

With all this said I know it’s alpha and all this will be taken care of in upcoming releases. It;s coming really well and hope it gets funded soon.

#26

You’ll be at the Comicon next week? What booth and what area. I’d love to meet you guys and actually touch base with someone on the IP Incubator. When is the class?

#27

Thanks man! There will be more dialogue in the final game, and a lot more interaction with things. At the end I had to decide when to stop adding to the Alpha, to get it out the door!

Everything you said is completely valid, and I have been building up a file of crit about the game - so rest assured the issues will be addressed in the final game. :wink:

#28

@grantmoore3d

The plan is to run a kickstarter campaign in the spring of next year. After that we’re looking towards digital distribution; though I am looking at cable too. I feel a large digital network (or running our own distribution) is the best idea though. There’s a world-wide audience out there that look at iPads longer than they look at TVs.

@redCigarette

Thanks! We are simplifying rendering for our next season. We used what we knew at the start of this season, so some things are more complicated than they need to be. MovieHoppers is a different team, but thanks :smiley: They are good friends.

#29

CONCEPT NAME: Le Gouffre

PRODUCTION BLOG: http://legouffre.com/en

CATEGORY: Animation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Le Gouffre is an 8-minute animated short film about two travellers who embark on the amazing journey of crossing an impossible gap. We are working full-time on this film, living on our own money, and we are basically trying to tell a great, dramatic story for everyone while creating a unique look that blends hand-painted textures with realistic animation.

PROJECT GOALS:

Win festivals, then make a big hit on the internet and gain the visibility and credibility that will allow us to eventually be able to live on telling our own stories.

STATUS NUMBER: 13

TEAM MEMBERS: 3

Carl Beauchemin - Animation and Rigging
Thomas Chrétien - FX and Compositing
David Forest - Animation and Art Direction

START DATE: July 2011

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE: December 2013

WIP THREAD: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=1085457

WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS WEEK:

I’m officially done animating on this film! Carl only has three shots left himself, and I’ve moved on to doing textures projections and compositing tweaks. We should be able to have everything rendered for Christmas, that way we can spend January doing only small adjustments and color correction. Feels good to know we almost have a movie! :slight_smile:

WHAT WENT WRONG:

We got the news that the National Film Board won’t be able to help us after all. Sadly, they just don’t have any availability for their foley and mastering studios before our film’s premiere. The good news though is that we might still be able to get some money to pay our sound designer.

Now, on to find somewhere else to do our foley and mastering…

SHOW AND TELL:

Since that’s what I’ve been mostly doing these last few days, we posted a new update on our production blog about texture projections. Here’s a few before/after of paint overs I did recently :

#30

@Frotze - That’s awesome, didn’t know you guys were making such quick progress on this thing. Pretty clever solution to do texture projections like that, I was wondering how you managed to get such a well crafted shot each time (texture-wise), I guess that answers my question!

Okay, so I don’t want to write up another update, will save that for next month’s thread, but wanted so show off my latest update which includes a level and cleaned up animations! Everything in the level is stock and I think considering I’m almost a 1-man team (a few people helping with some elements) this test level has given me the confidence that I can put together at least 70% of what I need using stock without it really taking away from the uniqueness of what I’m creating. Emphasis is on characters for beat-em-ups anyways.

//youtu.be/aBuM59dtMGI

#31

Well that looks pretty good, like what an update to “Sengoku” would look like. :slight_smile:

#32

@Frotze,

Feels good to know we almost have a movie!

That’s great. You guys are almost there. The recent post about camera mapping is a neat technique. Good luck!

@grantmoore3d,
That’s looking very cool! For environments you will be following the same rendering style as your characters right?

#33

Concept Name: SCHIRKOA

Website: http://www.schirkoa.com/

CGTalk WIP thread: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=1103500

Project Description:
SCHIRKOA is the story (an IP maybe) I will be trying to develop in coming years.
At the moment I am aiming at an animated Short Film. Followed by a graphic novel. And then let’s see what else can come out. It’s set in a dystopian city, involves bagheads and some other ‘creatures’

Status Number: 10

Team Members: 3

What went right:
We have a new member in our team. Nico Agatha Wibowo, a talented friend of ours from Indonesia has joined us and will be working from Vietnam. He will be responsible for character animation like Yiming. We are glad to have somebody as good as him as it’s gonna speed up things in coming months.

What went wrong:
My savings are drying up and it’s time for the music and mastering. There is lots of work left and having a day job makes things harder for all 3 of us. We are moving steady and hope it all goes well.

Show & Tell:

Another environment from Act 1. BAGHEAD197A will be walking past this alley. It will also be used for some shots in Act 3. Still got to touch up a little. Probably it needs some signboards and better lighting inside the houses. There is also a train crossing the bridge but it’s hardly visible right now. Will be more evident when it’s animated.

#34

First an update (because it was a big one;) number two, thank you for featuring us! O_O and three, I’ll post comments below in another reply

Ray & Clovis
STATUS NUMBER: 4!
TEAM MEMBERS: 17 (Voluntary)
ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE : Released Episode 5, working towards Episode 6:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VesMbeK3guY
WIP THREAD: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=1129549
WHAT WENT RIGHT THIS WEEK:
Episode 5 is released! Watch it here!
Or in order here

What went right is a lot! We had an amazing showing at CTNx ctnanimationexpo.com with over hundred people packed for the “Future of Online Collaboration” panel that Bobby Beck hosted. Even a nice rounding clap for our work! However at the Austin WizardWorld we had a huge room… and 10 people.

Not bad! We were going up against a Stan Lee panel and it was opening day of the con, I won’t fault people there. Plus that is 10 more fans that didn’t know anything about us, but are now people we know in person :slight_smile: That’s awesome. We also met with some of the artists that volunteer for us. Love it!

WHAT WENT WRONG:

Releasing Episode 5 was a blast, but it also put us behind on 6. Six has just two weeks to final render and music. That’s a very tough schedule and some shots are still in animation (eek!) With the holidays just around the corner I know it’s going to be very close. We’ll do our best, but it will be tight.

Also on our panel: We could have done such a better job at advertising it and naming it. The title was borrowed from our SIGGRAPH talk: Managing Remote Creative Projects. Not the sexiest thing when you want to appeal to parents, kids, and general animation fans. I commend all those who braved such a strange panel. The focus of the panel also could have been better. In the middle of it I switched the format and turned it into more of a conversation with people. This was a positive I feel because it made people be more responsive.

SHOW AND TELL:

Us presenting at WizardWorld
the poster for Reading is Magic Part2

#35

@grantmoore3d: This is looking cooler every update. In the future maybe we can collaborate :D!

@Frotze: I will PM you our sound designer, he used to work at Skywalker Sound. Great guy :slight_smile:

@redCigarette: I looooooveee your art direction

#36

@redCigarette - I kind of personally enjoy the contrast between a toon shaded character and more realistic environment, but I think in time I’ll eventually get to a visual style somewhere in between the two. I’m not entirely sure yet, kind of “discovering” the style as I go through iteration and feedback.

@daraand - Thanks! A few years in the future I plan to make a children’s game (after about two big game releases to “learn the ropes”) so if you’re still kicking around the IP Club at that time we might get a chance to! Also, I seriously laughed my ass off at the end of EP5 when he peaks out. I was expecting the gag, but it was still funny.

edit:

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I’ve been experimenting with Bitcoin lately (it’s all the rage amongst super-nerds lately) and have plans to accept it as a pre-order on my website. However, I’ve also launched a BitcoinStarter campaign and it’s almost funded. My goal here is to raise enough funds so I could pay my character artist for a second character pre-Kickstarter… I’d love to implement co-op in the prototype, but am slowly running out of cash. So if you know any Bitcoin evangelists who also like games, please pass this link along to them.

https://bitcoinstarter.com/projects/262

#37

Thanks and yeah, near the end at last! But you seem to be doing great progress yourself. You mentioned it was time for music and mastering, I’m guessing you have most of your animation done already? How long is the final film going to be?

Very good job on the compositing by the way, I love the look you achieved in that last frame. I’d be very curious to see a breakdown of your passes and see how it was done.

We’re three people working full time on this so it helps making progress faster. :slight_smile:

About your game… I have a suggestion to make concerning your last video showing the refined movement. It’s mostly apparent when you press briefly on the movement key or change direction, but there’s this sort of bump in the animation every time Kiko starts to move. Maybe you could try adding a stand-to-run animation to make a smoother transition?

Kudos to you guys! :slight_smile: By the way, I had a look at the website of your studio today… I’m impressed! Has any team approached you with ideas of their own to develop using your platform or is it just Ray & Clovis for now?

#38

BitCoin starter looks amazing! Thank you for sharing grantmoored :slight_smile:

Frotze: We do offer the platform for people to use. Send me an email and we’ll chat about it: david@theoryanimation.com

#39

@Frotze,

But you seem to be doing great progress yourself. You mentioned it was time for music and mastering, I’m guessing you have most of your animation done already? How long is the final film going to be?

Very good job on the compositing by the way, I love the look you achieved in that last frame. I’d be very curious to see a breakdown of your passes and see how it was done.

No no, we have lots to do in animation. It’s not even halfway yet. The way I am approaching music is to nail it in the animatics stage itself. That way I can make more nifty edits based on the music if needs be. That’s why I am gauging the estimated cost. The final film stands at around 13 mins.

Thanks man. Sure, I am thinking about putting breakdowns on the blog too. Very hard to find time for such things though. Hopefully I will, once we have say 70-80% of the film done.

#40

This might be of interest guys:

Raising Venture Capital for Mobile Games - Part 1
Quote:
“[color=#fffffe]Funding is one of the least discussed parts of the development process. Publishers dominated this conversation for a long time, but in the past few years, venture capital investors have become increasingly involved in games. The process of raising VC involves two key pieces: networking and pitching. I’ll cover these topics in later posts, but for now, let’s try to understand venture capital.”[/color]

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SethSivak/20131126/205710/Raising_Venture_Capital_for_Mobile_Games__Part_1.php