SeaQuest "by any other name" (VFX research 4)

“An urgent distress signal leads the seaQuest to a hydroponic research lab, where all signs of life have been erased”

In seaQuest season 2 episode 7, by any other name. the research lab is over ran by nature and exotic plants,, in this episode a team are sent to investigate, and everything seems to be normal.. um other then a small vine that seems to have grabbed one of the team members feet, thinking nothing of it another member takes a plant to study.

as she places the normal flower in a glass on the desk and leaves the room. se the viewer sees the plant starts to rapidly grow until it breaks the glass. it later starts to grow vines that a pear to grow towards the camera.

later in the episode a crow member is alerted by a scream, as they go to investigate they find an over grown carnivores plant in a room, and the researcher screaming for help from the corner of the room. As one of the crow members helps her, he gets his food grabbed by a vine, the plant laches several more vins around him and turns the victims to sand.. 

The Mummy Returns (VFX research 3)

 In the opening Prolog of The mummy Returns we follow the Scorpion King as he leads his arm to war, the kind and his army fail and are driven into the desert, where one by one they all die till the Scorpion Kind is left.


so the king makes a deal with the God Anubis, asking to take control of Anubis's undead army to take revenge, for this act the king would give up his soul. Anubis agrees and saves him, by sending "message" (a scorpion, how ironic)

The king gets stung by a scorpion, as the king eats the scorpion grass starts to spawn and grow around the kind,

 As the camera moves back, we see the forming Oases growing outwards in all directions, grass, vines, trees, shrubs and other forms of vegetation

This all takes place in less then 30 seconds, at the end a lush oases has been made,,


This is more relevant to my idea, and it has given me some insight on the formation and growth patens, something i will use in my VFX video

Elephants Dream (VFX research 2)

Elephants Dream follows two characters, Emo and Proog a they explore the seemingly unending machines. the old Guy Proog is trying to convince the Emo that this Machine would is a wonderful beautiful but dangerous place,but Emo just cant see what Proog sees. as they keep walking deeper into the machinery. as they are in a lift thats suspended in mid-air, Proog asked Emo what he sees to his left and right but Emo sees nothing

Later on they are in a small room as we see Proog placing some final tiles. Proog questions Emo why he cant see how perfect this would i,, to this Emo replays with "why should i trust my life to something that isn't there"


As Emo tryes to ecape from Proog by walking away from him, but as Emo  walks towards a wall it starts to move away from him making the room longer. until Proog tells Emo "its a trap"

To this Emo mocks Proog by stating "to the left we see.um..hanging gardens of babylon" and no sooner had he said this the room starts to fall apart revelling an organic type electrical vines that take over and pull apart the room. as the vines grow along the surface.

what we now see is the true machines of this would, and as the room fully falls apart Emo states..again mocking Proogs Question about sight "on the right side you can see...look at what!!, the colossus of rhodes,.: this statement makes the room fully falls apart till they are surrounded by the electrical vines.





finally Emo adds "the colossus of rhodes and it is here just for you Proog, Just for you!" this.. this causes a huge electrical hand to forms. as it tries to grab Proog, proog douges it, grabs his walking stick and knocks Emo out, ..since this nightmare has been created from Emos mind, as soon as he's knocked out, the vines fall and die



i intend to use this in my FVX, but rather then it being electrical, it will be natural, but would behave in a similar manner. growing uncontrollably and maybe near the end of the 1 minute VFX the vines might form some kind of shapes?..

Vines (Research 01)

Since i have picked "Man vs Nature" as my response to "Smoke and Mirrors" VFX, i started to look into Nature mainly vines and weeds.

the reason i focussed on a plant like a vine was because of its overpowering nature to grow on pretty much anything it can. Vines/ ivy has the natural ability to grow on any surface in any direction, and in almost any environment and element.

Moss is also a good element to look into. as it closely follows any vine type plant, normally seen on and around roof tops,IN addition to plants, i needed to see how they grow over times, 1st thought came to mind was a scene from "elephants dream" Blenders 1st open movie.

In this sean Emo starts to go a little crazy and starts fantasising. the room is a small 4 sided cube at head hight.. as Emo talks towards one of the walls it starts to move away from him, making the room expand, later he starts making small statements and the room starts to fall apart as organic- electrical type vines start to grow towards him.

Cry of Fear

Cry of Fear is a single player survival horror game, was first releast as a half life mod in February 2012 on steam (as a source mode you NEEDED Half Life to play)

The game takes place I a fairly quiet ran down Scandinavian city known as Faversholm. And the game offers a fairly large game world to explore and get scared. Like most games Cry of Fear is split up into chapters, 8 in total.

In Cry of Fear the start the game in a bedroom flat, there are no lights and the only thing to hand is a camora, (light source) as you walk through the rooms (in compleat darkness) you will see white X on the floor/walls, by using to the camora’s flash light to see, you open doors and see dead bodies (a mad handing for the roof,. A body on the floor writing on the wall is blood).

In the 1^st cahmper you have to had a small pocket knife and a fone (light source), as you progress in the game, you obtain a gun (with minimum bullets)

Cry of Fear adapted a the saving style of Resident Evil, a tape recorder will be in short supplies and easy to miss, so save, save, save.

now this game has its downsides, for one it’s a mod,, using existing “models” characters and enemies from Half life, and with this, you will find poor animations for example, if a monster sees you, it will run to you with great speed… then stop dead and attack. 

on the 1st of april this image(left)  was uploaded to Facebook, and to the games main site, with no explanation what it meant or was refuting to. so fans just had to wait and see, when the date came, it was announced that you could download Cry of Fear on Steam as a stand along game (half life not required)

this step from a half Life mod into a stand along game, meant a lot of bugs were addressed, but mainly, it meant that any steam account holder could now play the game (if the dare t)..

The Walking Dead

The walking dead

the walking dead is a third person, single player, point and click story driven RPG game developed and published by Tell-tale Games. AVALABLE for all platforms, windows/ MAC (steam), xbox 360 (xbox live), ps3 (PSN),

-the game is split into 5 parts each released 2 months after each over

the game is split in 5 parts, or "episodes" and this is shown with a "previously on" (to recap on the decisions made) and "next time on" as a teaser. each "episode" consists of around 2-3 hours of gameplay and dialogue.

each episode was written by one person, and their ideas influenced by the previous episode and with the final episode scene in mind

Unlike the majority of Click and Point games that are puzzle solving, the walking dead: game focusses more on the story and characters personal development throughout the zombie apocalypse.

Telltails uses this click and point game play to give the gamer the opportunity  to make right and wrong decisions that would effect the characters. In addition to the click and point, the game does allow you to assume control of the main protagonist by moving him around the environment searching for things.

the experience telltails are trying to give the gamer, is an interactive movie where they are the director. So to speak.

the game is based on Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic book series. And uses a comic book style, all characters and surrounding scenery and or objects are textured with thick black shading sketch marks much like a graphic novel. To emphasize creases, wrinkles, and deep shadows

Book to TV to Game

both the walking dead tv series and game are based from the original comic book series and both containing elements of the original comic book. such as characters and events. in the tv series the events happen in different order to the comic, and some characters in the game resemble characters from the Tv series. But like I said before, glen and hurshal are characters from each media all with the same role

Spyro the Dragon

Spyro (game series development)

 

Spyro the dragon is a well know game and character that has a total of 13 games, many sequels and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. .

This little dragon and his trusted frond “Sparx” first appeared on the PS1 in North America on September 10^th. 1998 named “Spyro the Dragon” and later in Europe on October 23th. Since then the game has spawned numerous follow on games and new series. latest being Sky landers,, and accompanying them some books.

 The games development changed greatly with each new developers company (total of 13 over the years). But not all the games were a success,,, 

the original spiro series (Spyro the dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, Spyro: year of the Dragon) all follow the same principles, you start off in the “dragon ream” some danger or former “bad guy (RED) Threaten the other words, and it’s up to you to visit each world visa a portal (used as a loading screen/save point) and complete various task (ie collect gems and find dragon eggs). As key points of progression you will face a boss sadly for the PS1 bosses they were both annoying but predicable (would always use the same attacks )…

Following this was the birth of the PS2,, with that a new batch of Spyro games with my favourite Sptro: enter the Dragonfly, the game play was nothing new, main words, portals and bosses. But the real enjoyment were the bigger and more stunning surrounding, and also a smother game play, in all it was a very good enjoyable game, kinda surprising that both developers simply disappeared..

but, there was once game that really bugged me, Spyro A hero’s tail saw the return of Red (a former dragon elder), sadly the game play was sluggish and damn slow, I don’t know if it was due to an old game (ps2 disk) but the game did have a lot of bugs and glitches, from whole level areas failing to render, or you (Spyro) finding yourself in an infinity free fall unable to move or die. But also, the games physics (enemies AI mainly) was annoying, there was an annoying pause from your attack to their reaction/death…

2 years passed and a new spyro series begun,,, a more darker tail. “The Legend of Spyro” the series also served as a “reboot” and ending of a legend”. Whereas the games prior to this series were Platform, this series of games used a more “Action” and accompanied with a stronger linear story lines. Where you could only move followed and was not permitted to revisit passed levels to “free rom” as you once could.

(Please note I haven’t pleased to whole Legend of Spyro series, only beginning and end -_-‘ Oops)

This final series acted as such with 3 games, a beginning (Legend of Spyro A New Beginning) Middle (Legend of Spyro Eternal Night) And end (Legend of Spyro Down of the Dragon).

In “A New Beginning” you start a new life, (this game will cancel out all the past events and characters you met) the maines main enemies and boss is called Cynder, she is corrupted by darkness and she plans to releasing her Dark Master from his prison, But not everything is as it 1^st seams, once defeated, Cynder turns out to be no bigger than Spyro, a child in fact…

The start of “The Eternal Night” follows on from “A New Beginning”, befor running off  Cynder apologizes about her actions, and leaves before she can do further harm to Spyro. …as the game progresses you find yourself meeting Cynder . at the end of end of the game, spyro in cases  himself along with Cynder and Sparxs in a crystal as the “Well of Souls collapses. The story continues,,,

Now to end the legend of spyro with Dawn of the Dragon, just like “The Eternal Night” the game continuous with one difference, you can switch between playing as Spyro and Cynder, this means this is also the 1^st spyro game to allow a co-op mode element, the story has Spyro and Cynder in cased  in the crystal for many years, when they emerge they are older, with this aged they now have filly developed dragon wings,,, this means for an all new free-Fly consoles,, name suggests  you can fly and glides without limitation….we there is once, you do slowly descend (like in previous games when gliding) but you never actually land, unless you make them…

I was never able to complete Down of the Dragon, because of this free fly mode,, in the 3^rd or 4^th level you are in an large open space perfect for flying, and I found it quite peaceful..