Lisa and Nather joined programmers Chris and Bronson in a refresher lesson on Unity basics. Together, they were reminded of how to set up a  file, begin to model terrain, texture it, add trees, grass, wind as well as import assets from Blender.

Meanwhile, in the larger lab, the remainder of the participants began lessons on digital inking and After Effects. Each participant got their hands on a wacom tablet and pen as well as an example pencil sketch, which we all then began to “ink”. Basically, this means that the paper sketch was used as a http://www.rustburgpharmacy.com template which was drawn over in much higher resolution with black outlines. This allows traditional pencil artists to convert their work into a more pleasing, non-pixelated format on screen.

After the sketch was “inked”, it was then grouped into layers for each body part. This was in preparation for animation, so that the character body, arms, and head could be moved separately as well as the boat and water.

The next step afterwards was to bring these layers into After Effects and animate them! First, Nancy taught the group the basics of this new and powerful software, including using live links with Photoshop so that images could be adjusted live (meaning an open file in Photoshop can have its colors adjusted, and the changes will instantly show up in the After Effects composition which includes said Photoshop file).

A lot of progress was made and a lot of fun had! Our next meeting will be for the week long intensive May 21st where we aim to complete rough cuts of the cinematics as well as a playable demo.

Looking forward to it!

Another important step forward was naming both the newly merged game AND the two villages. Seeing as the Skins1.0 production was titled “Otsi:! Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legends” and the Skins2.0 game was “The Adventures of Skahion:hati: The Legend of the Stone Giant”, the participants of Skins3.0 appropriately titled their collaborative work “Skahion:hati: Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legends”.

After settling on that title, the team did some research into past Mohawk villages and what their naming conventions were. We found two existing sites that had perfect names for our two fictional, neighboring villages. Skahion:hati’s original village where he heads off to fight the stone giant is now named Osquake, which translates to “under the rock”, the old village which has been terrorized and destroyed by the giant head is now called Onoalagona, which means “Big Head”, and the waterfall area where the battle with the stone giant takes place has been nicknamed Ohneka, meaning “water”.

Before getting into the technical animation lesson, everyone showed what they had made over the break and committed their files to SVN. We now have a rattle added to our list of 3D assets, made by Lisa, a club added by Lance, a beautiful intro animation by Towanna, more longhouse details by Nather and an update script by Tathe.

Seeing as everyone seemed to have a good handle on 3D modeling and texturing, we moved on to animation. The lesson began with learning to move an object (in this case, it was a 3D model of Pacman) using keyframes to animate its basic attributes of location, rotation and scale. Next, the students learned how to build a basic armature (or rig) for a simple object in order to animate the mesh bending – as an example, we all made a skeleton for our 3D Pacman so that he can do his trademark mouth opening and closing.

Last but not least, we set up a http://windhampharmacy.com proper, full rig that was relatively simple to create using the plug-in “Rigify” that comes packaged with Blender. Almost instantly, any biped model can have a beautiful, easy to use rig applied to it with little hassle, though some skinning may have to be adjusted.

The homework for this week was, as always, to push forward with production!

Due date: May 8^th

–          Tathe & Towanna will continue to refine their script so that we can officially book voice actors and recording time. Do not forget to include in-map lines and battle exclamations!

–          Now that we have a proper title, Lisa will be designing a new intro title card for the game

–          Nather & Lance will continue on various models for the game, as we will be beginning Unity next week!

As always, remember to take Jing screenshots for documentation and/or errors. You can always contact us via the google group email if there are any questions.

See you all next time!

For your reading research/pleasure, here is an article I [Nancy] wrote after attending the Montreal International Game Summit in 2010.

http://www.igda.org/newsletter/2010/12/08/k-i-s-s-and-sell-games-that-surpass-borders-and-bounty/