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[fish]

I'm definitely on the same page about street art; I think it still has it's artistic innocence because it hasn't been institutionalized yet (art school), and I sincerely hope that institutionalizing it is an impossibility.  For me it's what art is really about, getting one's message out there, experimenting with modes of representation, helping beautify spaces (graffiti > brick wall), etc.

And as a future architect who is quite bitter towards modernism, I find graffiti to be the ultimate rejection of minimalism, the statement that "a blank wall isn't good enough."

I guess I did mean graffiti then, in terms of the game style.

to me the whole movement is simply about reclaiming public places.
putting a piece of art out there for every piece of poisonous advertising.
bringing balance.
it's beautiful.

[GregWS]

I'm definitely on the same page about street art; I think it still has it's artistic innocence because it hasn't been institutionalized yet (art school), and I sincerely hope that institutionalizing it is an impossibility.  For me it's what art is really about, getting one's message out there, experimenting with modes of representation, helping beautify spaces (graffiti > brick wall), etc.

And as a future architect who is quite bitter towards modernism, I find graffiti to be the ultimate rejection of minimalism, the statement that "a blank wall isn't good enough."

I guess I did mean graffiti then, in terms of the game style.

to me the whole movement is simply about reclaiming public places.
putting a piece of art out there for every piece of poisonous advertising.
bringing balance.
it's beautiful.

Yeah!  I'll be a little more extreme and say "screw balance; kill the adds!"

I'm all for good public spaces, which North America generally lacks.  The thing that really disturbs me now though (and can't be solved with Street Art) is the corporate renaming of once neutral places.  And from what I can tell, this is a Canada-wide problem that's sneaking up everywhere now (I'll assume this has become and issue in the States too, be please correct me if not).  Here are a few gems from Edmonton:

Slivercity became Scotiabank Theatres
Space and Science Center became Odysseum and then became Telus World of Science
Skyreach Centre (which, was, I'll admit, a corporate name, it just didn't sound like one) became Rexall Place

Anyway, I guess the only thing we could do would be refuse to use the new name, but your average Joe probably wouldn't get behind that, so it wouldn't actually force a change.

[Cymon]

Hey, almost entirely randomly I hit the Team Fortress website and on their latest blog entry (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1783) they mentioned that they had considered doing a claymation style for the game. Really, it's too bad they didn't IMHO.

[Shambrook]

I'd love to see more claymation used in games. Neverwere looked awsome and Clay Fighters will always have a soft spot in my heart. But after that I don't think I've seen any games use it since.

Neverwere? What is Neverwere? You mean the homoerotic student animation?

I think you mean Neverhood, you cretin.

Eh, it's been 11 years since I played it when I was 9.
Also holy shit, there was a sequel and theres a movie in production... Fuck yeah.

You want to know why you don't see more clamation in games? Because it's difficult and when they go out on a limb to make a game that uses it simpletons like yourself never actually play the game, even tho they make vague misspelled references to it.

Claymation is pretty much the same techniques used in making 3D animation, it's no more difficult just more time consuming.

So when you guys say you'd like to see a graffiti styled game do you mean like physicly done with grafiti techniques or just the chraricture style that's used in a lot of grafiti?

[Zaphos]

Claymation is pretty much the same techniques used in making 3D animation, it's no more difficult just more time consuming.

Er ... 3d animation is pretty different from claymation.

[Shambrook]

The techniques used are pretty simmilar.
You have a model, put it in a pose, take a picture, move it to the next pose etc. The only major diffrence is that the computer fills in the inbetweens in 3D animation were as you have to seperatley pose each inbetween in claymation.

[William Broom]

Also, when watching the Muto video, all I could think of is "but they're just painting white over all that nice graffiti!" Good video, but... destructive. Stuff needs to grow back, now. Just me? 

But that grafitti would probably have just been rubbed out a few days later by civil servants. Now, though, it's immortalized in a great artwork! (well, a pretty good artwork - I thought Muto was a great idea but it dragged on too long).

[Dacke]

Clay is also subject to gravity, tends to generally deform and once you've moved on to the next pose it's hard to go back and make small changes. Still, clay > 3D any day.

[Gainsworthy]

I love that Team Fortress blog. Enormously informative, especially when compared to the usual game production "information".

And yes, clay is lots of fun all round, but much better for a static structure. You must be ready for the fact you can't really easily edit what's been done. Still looks brilliant when done right.

Also, Chutup? You must have some very... enthusiastic civil servants 'round where you live. I mean, suburban graffiti tends to rapidly disappear, but it's generally rubbishy scrawl. The really solid city stuff, on the other hand, has a rather long lifespan by comparison. Um, just saying.

[Cymon]

The techniques used are pretty similar.
You have a model, put it in a pose, take a picture, move it to the next pose etc. The only major difference is that the computer fills in the inbetweens in 3D animation were as you have to separately pose each in between in claymation.

If that's the ONLY major difference then you're missing a ton of minor ones:

• Space, claymation is physical meaning you may need a warehouse, where are with 3D animation you only need a computer no matter how vast.
• Camera placement. Getting the camera where you need it for the shot can be a pain in the patooty requiring boom cameras and such. With 3D animation it's easy, just set the X,Y, and Z and don't worry about the fact that your shot is indoors and you have a roof above it and a floor benieth, and 4 walls.
• Lighting. Lighting a scene in Claymation runs into a lot of the same problems as the camera. Virtual lighting can be placed anywhere and, oh, ambient lighting is just a variable that automatically lights everything, tho perhaps not to the desired effect.
• End of the day. if the end of the day comes in the middle of a claymation scene the next morning you can bet your monocle that gravity has had it's way with your model and you'll have to spend a little while restoring the scene to match the previous frame. In 3D scenes are weightless.

I can't argue that claymation has an ascetic but to argue that "it's no different than 3D animation so everyone should be doing it" is just plain wrong.

[cmspice]

One of these days.

One of these days....

I'm going to do better digitized graphics (MK style, or street fighter the movie the game if you prefer) and make  game out of it.

But before then I need to take a photography class.

One of these days...

I'm going to do 3d rendered into 2d resulting in the smoothest animations ever. (yeah yeah, I know this has been done)

But before then I need to take a modeling class.

slightly more practical, I was thinking of running a waking life type filter (probably just use illustrator's LIVE trace actually) on some photographs of people in jumpsuits.

[ptoing]

I'm going to do 3d rendered into 2d resulting in the smoothest animations ever.

In animation smooth does not necessarily mean better(most people do not seem to understand this). It can be smooth as fuck, but if your keyframes, your weight, or the volumes (hard to mess up in 3D I guess) are shit it's bad animation, no matter how smooth.

[Robotacon]

Flash developers (and everyone else for that matter) should all strive to create games in the manner of Joel Trussel.
I've been watching the

video so many times now it's ridiculous.

[moi]

Like castle crashers?

[Lucaz]

I'd like something that looks like german expressionism, and thos silent movies, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. I guess there might be something like that, but I haven't seen any.

As for claymation, I don't like much how it looks in games. On Platypus it looks well, but in others, like Neverhood, I find it odd looking. I think my problem with them is the way it looks when sprites superpose or interact with others.

[medieval]

American advertisements from the 1960s

[PenguinHat]

I would like to see a top down animated ASCII. Why do the letters and symbols have to stay still? Let them dance about!

Black and white games could also be good.

What about something that uses fluid dynamics for good not evil? You could have a game where everything is a black shadow on a black background, but there is a constant rain of fluid from the top of the screen, that collides with the environment, the player and anything else, meaning that you can make out everything. Just. That would be interesting. Maybe it would work better with gas dynamics?

An RTS or turn based strategy game that uses top down photos of wargaming models for the graphics. In fact, maybe a digital wargaming simulator. Pay out of your nose for overpriced Warhammer 40K models! Then, assemble and paint them! And then use your army to play against other people!

Something with chemcial skeletal formula? I always liked that way they look.

There's a lot of good stuff in this thread. Joel Trussel's stuff is really good, and that Muto video was great.

Edit:You could turn the digital wargaming simulator into a dating sim. Well not a dating sim, more like the absolute opposite. But you know what I mean, a game where you have to manage your time in a vaguely real world context to do something.

[muku]

I would like to see a top down animated ASCII. Why do the letters and symbols have to stay still? Let them dance about!

What exactly do you mean by that what Dwarf Fortress and other modern roguelikes don't already do?

Something with chemcial skeletal formula? I always liked that way they look.

I guess Go Beryllium! comes pretty close.

[Zaphos]

The techniques used are pretty simmilar.
You have a model, put it in a pose, take a picture, move it to the next pose etc. The only major diffrence is that the computer fills in the inbetweens in 3D animation were as you have to seperatley pose each inbetween in claymation.

In terms of process I think this is a pretty important difference.  But in addition to that:
 - 3D animation for games can be done with, for example, blend trees for smooth animation transitions in real time -- in this case you're designing a generative system for animation instead of directly designing animation, so that the game can generate smooth animations which can still respond immediately to any player input.
 - Secondary motion can be implemented procedurally or through simulation in 3D animation.  Since these motions can change depending on the current action, the recent past actions, the environment, and the actions of nearby players, they would require much redundant work to capture manually.
 - Often you want to integrated your planned animations with some inverse kinematics-based controls which will ensure the player can, for example, reach towards an object regardless of where it is placed.
 - It is relatively trivial to apply free form deformations to a 3D model
 - 3D animation data is decoupled from the visual details of the characters.  This allows us to change the skin, clothes, etc, of a character without redoing animation.  It also allows us to re-targeted animation to whole new characters, which means we can animate a whole city of roughly similar characters without no additional animation per character.  (The most extreme recent example of animation re-targeting would probably be Spore.)
 - Relatedly -- you don't "take a picture" of 3D animation; you represent it in a format where the computer understands the motion precisely.  This allows an animated character to affect the environment.  In addition, be treating the animation data as goals to drive a physically-based simulation, the world (or other characters) can affect the animation in novel and unexpected ways.  (The funniest example of this is Sumotori Dreams).
 - 3D animation can also be derived from more sources, for example we can integrate precise motion capture data in to a 3D animation with relative ease.  You can also generate a blend tree or a motion graph from motion capture data and get a system which generates novel motion.
 - If you're doing 3D animation, you usually want to give the player some camera control or render from different angles, which means you're often animating to a wide range of views.
 - In 3D you can animate things like surface material properties to smoothly change, for example to show metal rust before your eyes; this would probably be hard to do with clay.

So anyway, I think they're pretty different, especially in the context of animation for games.

[Cymon]

Benza, your statement has just been proven wrong twice. I expect to see your resignation on my desk in the morning.

The techniques used are pretty similar.
You have a model, put it in a pose, take a picture, move it to the next pose etc. The only major difference is that the computer fills in the inbetweens in 3D animation were as you have to separately pose each in between in claymation.

If that's the ONLY major difference then you're missing a ton of minor ones:

• Space, claymation is physical meaning you may need a warehouse, where are with 3D animation you only need a computer no matter how vast.
• Camera placement. Getting the camera where you need it for the shot can be a pain in the patooty requiring boom cameras and such. With 3D animation it's easy, just set the X,Y, and Z and don't worry about the fact that your shot is indoors and you have a roof above it and a floor benieth, and 4 walls.
• Lighting. Lighting a scene in Claymation runs into a lot of the same problems as the camera. Virtual lighting can be placed anywhere and, oh, ambient lighting is just a variable that automatically lights everything, tho perhaps not to the desired effect.
• End of the day. if the end of the day comes in the middle of a claymation scene the next morning you can bet your monocle that gravity has had it's way with your model and you'll have to spend a little while restoring the scene to match the previous frame. In 3D scenes are weightless.

I can't argue that claymation has an ascetic but to argue that "it's no different than 3D animation so everyone should be doing it" is just plain wrong.

The techniques used are pretty simmilar.
You have a model, put it in a pose, take a picture, move it to the next pose etc. The only major diffrence is that the computer fills in the inbetweens in 3D animation were as you have to seperatley pose each inbetween in claymation.

In terms of process I think this is a pretty important difference.  But in addition to that:
 - 3D animation for games can be done with, for example, blend trees for smooth animation transitions in real time -- in this case you're designing a generative system for animation instead of directly designing animation, so that the game can generate smooth animations which can still respond immediately to any player input.
 - Secondary motion can be implemented procedurally or through simulation in 3D animation.  Since these motions can change depending on the current action, the recent past actions, the environment, and the actions of nearby players, they would require much redundant work to capture manually.
 - Often you want to integrated your planned animations with some inverse kinematics-based controls which will ensure the player can, for example, reach towards an object regardless of where it is placed.
 - It is relatively trivial to apply free form deformations to a 3D model
 - 3D animation data is decoupled from the visual details of the characters.  This allows us to change the skin, clothes, etc, of a character without redoing animation.  It also allows us to re-targeted animation to whole new characters, which means we can animate a whole city of roughly similar characters without no additional animation per character.  (The most extreme recent example of animation re-targeting would probably be Spore.)
 - Relatedly -- you don't "take a picture" of 3D animation; you represent it in a format where the computer understands the motion precisely.  This allows an animated character to affect the environment.  In addition, be treating the animation data as goals to drive a physically-based simulation, the world (or other characters) can affect the animation in novel and unexpected ways.  (The funniest example of this is Sumotori Dreams).
 - 3D animation can also be derived from more sources, for example we can integrate precise motion capture data in to a 3D animation with relative ease.  You can also generate a blend tree or a motion graph from motion capture data and get a system which generates novel motion.
 - If you're doing 3D animation, you usually want to give the player some camera control or render from different angles, which means you're often animating to a wide range of views.
 - In 3D you can animate things like surface material properties to smoothly change, for example to show metal rust before your eyes; this would probably be hard to do with clay.

So anyway, I think they're pretty different, especially in the context of animation for games.