by ·Comments Off on Portal 2 Music Video – Exile Vilify By The National

I have another film from the Tortoise Butler crew to share today.  This one was made for Valve’s recent Portal 2 music video competition.

 

I actually didn’t have such a massive involvement in this one.  I worked on some of the special effects and just sat at my computer churning out Half Life / Portal themed posters and citadel images that they placed in the film in post production to give the deserted streets of London a more in-universe feel.

The production was really done on a shoe string (with a steady-cam repair being carried out using a wooden spoon at one point) and in a very short space of time, approaching 48 hour film challenge conditions.

The way in which this one came out surprised me.  Some of the effects I worked on were much more effective than I expected they would be and it just went to show just how much you can do with the machines you have in your home and how even in a short space of time you can produce some decent quality content.

I also can’t believe they found someone who looked so much like Chell.

by ·Comments Off on Game Design Friday: Placeholder Graphics

I am ever trying to learn the art of Game Design through trial and error, or as I like to call it, error and error (which if you learn by making mistakes is twice as efficient).

One element of the design process that routinely throws roadblocks up in my path is the graphical development.  When you start making your game, it is inevitably not going to look like a polished game unless you’re making text only interactive fiction, and even then you might end up changing the font.  This is unavoidable and is something that you shouldn’t be worried about, but there’s a balancing act here whereby you need to get it looking like something you’re at least partially happy with, otherwise you’re not going to work on the game at all.

I am awful at working on things at the best of times, but I so frequently get stumped by the issue of working with placeholder graphics.  I want the game to look like its polished state from phase one and that urge can damage development and general productivity.

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by ·Comments Off on Listening Post

Sometimes I’ll work on something and completely forget to mention it at all to anyone because it’s actually completed and completed work is something I’m so unused to that it somehow drops out of my brain and scurries away from my conscious mind.

This short film is something I wrote and starred in to help a friend over at BBC Research & Development in testing a new piece of broadcast technology (which I think ultimately broke, but in a way that was useful to the development process).  It was recently shown in a “BBC Shorts” short film festival and presenter Francine Stock  thought I might be an actor.

I can’t watch this without cringing because I wrote it and had a very firm idea of what Tim was supposed to act and sound like and this wasn’t it.  It’s a bit like if you’ve ever tried to draw something that looked so good in your head but came out oddly deformed on paper; a mocking and twisted facsimile that taunts your inability to produce art (cf. every comic I have ever drawn).

Despite this I am oddly proud of it because it is something I have worked on that is complete and Not Completely Awful.

By some odd coincidence, my friend operates under the banner of  Tortoise Butler Films and other things that she has done with various other artists can be found by clicking that link.

I’ve worked on several of them in various capacities, including some photoshop work for an amazing Portal 2 video.

I also did a little logo for her which I think is still being used.

by ·Comments Off on 9 Second Lego Castle

Well, I like stop motion and I like lego…

I remember when I was young Lego used to make amazing adverts with everything building up in stop motion and flying around all over the place.  Maybe if I’m feeling ambitious I might try something similar, but for the time being I’m just proud I got this to work.  I want to try and make a little bit of traditional style animation using the same software so this has turned into a wonderful little test.

by ·Comments Off on CTS: Making background art and textures

Chaotic Tortoise Studios (CTS) is an indie games development studio that exists largely only in my mind.

I like this sprite. This sprite is not a problem. I will probably post this sprite a lot because I like this sprite.

I’ve always appreciated that to make a video game it takes a lot of work and mastery of several different disciplines.  Despite this, I’ve discovered that I never actually really appreciated just how much of this work and mastery goes in to making even the crummiest of games.  Never again will I outright dismiss a title as bad or worthless without first spending a bit of time checking the small minor details that I have overlooked. 

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