Project 2: Final Project Proposal

Original Concept:

My concept for the final project involves a garden gnome, the protagonist, defending the bio diverse ecosystem dwelling within a cranky old man's garden. This particular garden gnome possesses the attributes of a superhero, using unnatural strength (not that it's natural for an inanimate object to possess super human attributes) and various gadgets to protect the garden and its inhabitants (such as flowers, worms, other garden ornaments) against various threats which are constantly looming over it. These threats include the likes of neighbourhood children playing pranks on the old man and hungry crows and aphids.
This machinima animation will largely be a cartoony parody of the popular comic superhero, Batman, and the different universes his character has been placed within. These universes include those such as the original comic series, the television series (circa 1960s) and the latest live action movies. The animation will be riddled with over the top fight scenes, accompanied by ridiculously designed characters, all made to parody one of many Batman characters in some way.

Basic Script:

• An old man is gardening and goes inside for a drink of water as it is a hot, sunny day.
• During this, lifeless garden gnomes are sitting in the garden. A Punk kid (joker parody) straps a firecracker to one of the garden gnomes. The other gnome then comes to life, dives underneath the soil and re-emerges in costume (as Batgnome) and proceeds to beat and tie up kid. During this fight, camera frequently switches back to the gnome that is about to explode (it is panicking).
• The fight will involve much of the “BAM”, “POW” and “ZOK” text used in the old Batman television series.
• The punk kid freaks out at the sight of a living garden gnome and attempts to run away only to be lassoed by Batgnome’s rope (from his utility belt) and dragged back to the fight. The punk kid then pulls out a Swiss army knife and tries to stab Batgnome, which does nothing to pierce his porcelain skin. Batgnome smirks while the kid fails to stab him, but then the tables are turned as the punk kid switches from the knife attachment to a hammer. Batgnome then desperately dodges each swing of the hammer, occasionally getting lucky punches on the punk kid. During this part of the fight, the Batgnome leaps around the front yard (over the garden, the letterbox, the rainwater tank), resulting in the punk kid hammering all of these things, destroying them.
• Batgnome escapes the punk kid with his grappling hook and hides behind a bucket on the lawn, next to the nozzle of the garden hose. He then sees the punk kid, who is creeping around trying to find him, walking towards the sprawled out garden hose, which is attached to the rainwater tank. As the punk kid comes up to the slack part of the hose in the middle of the lawn, Batgnome pulls the nozzle end tight, causing the rest of the rope to trip up the punk kid. He then leaps in a uses the hose to tie the kid up.
• Just as this happens, the fuse of the firecracker that is strapped to the other gnome runs out. As the distressed gnome and Batgnome flinch in anticipation of an explosion, smoke billows out of the firecracker and they realise it was a dud. The punk kid then starts laughing and says “why so serious?” as the old man comes back out from the house.
• The camera zooms in on the old man’s face as his face goes from a relaxed, refreshed look to a look of unwelcomed surprise and anguish. The camera then zooms out to a wide angle view of the area, giving a full view of the destroyed front yard.

Mood Board:

Character Sketches:

Project 1: Introduction to a Realtime 3D Engine

This week's project was an activity involving learning the basic elements of using the Unity game engine. This included creating simple assets in 3D (using Autodesk Maya), importing these assets into Unity and then using them to explore some of the attributes Unity allows users to implement into game environments. I decided to explore Unity and its tools by creating a small skate park. This skate park involves a half pipe, quarter pipe, rail, etc; many of the essential pieces to a regular skate park. I also created a skateboard for the player to navigate through the skate park. When creating this game environment, I had to make use of Unity's importing methods (for the 3D assets and their textures), collision tools, cameras and player controls.
Most of this was relatively simple to learn and implement within Unity. Importing all of my assets was simple enough, although some of the 3D meshes I had deleted within the scene in Autodesk Maya reappeared when the scene was imported into Unity. I wasn't sure how to stop this happening so i just sifted through the scene once in Unity and deleted these unwanted objects. For most of the objects in the environment, mesh colliders were good enough to create basic collision detection. Although, for the skateboard I used a wheel collider and a mesh collider caused it to half sink through other meshes in the environment. Once all of the 3D assets were imported and collision detection was set up, I parented the skateboard to a camera for the player's perspective and applied a basic movement script to the skateboard. To get the skateboard to rotate instead of strafing left to right across the screen I had to edit the movement script (with some outside help seeing as I'm not a programmer) to allow the player to use the mouse to rotate the skateboard. The skateboard doesn't rotate perfectly, but it's good enough for now. After completing all of this, I created the executable file for a playable version of this game.

Below is a screenshot of the skate park game environment: