::BAF Game recap::

Time for a bit unusual post, because.. why not :) !

Over a week ago I've attended a game part of Bradford Animation Festival. Suprisingly, it was way more fun than I've expected it to be (last year BAF was dragging and I felt asleep couple times during talks.. ups!) and I'm definately going next year (I  might again skip the animation bit of festival. Unless they'll have LAIKA and Boxtrolls. Or someone from Dreamworks talking about HTTYD 2. Yup, wishful thinking;)). Since I've posted a very detailed review on my college blog (day 1 and day 2), I'm not going to repeat myself and just paste few really good bits that happened.

 Day 1:

Steve Lycett - SUMO Digital - worked on many titles, including Split Second and various SEGA games. His latest project was Katsuma Unleashed - a handheld game that he and his team were able to produce in just over 7 months. Steve talked a lot about pre-production of this title and showed us WIP gameplay, animation tests for different characters, intro video.Another game presented was Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed. This one took 3 years to make and was quite challenging - everything had to be animated and each environment unique and interesting.

 Karl Abson - lecturer at Bradford University, talked about techniques of animal motion capture. He also talked about the uses of mo-cap and difficulties of working with animals - in his case, with horses. Although it's a very hard and time consuming process, the effects produced during session are far better and more realistic/believable than when animated by key framing (mo-cap is a data driven animation). iKinema was another thing metioned during this talk - it's a plugin for Maya that allows a real time skeleton mapping with mo-cap session.

Day 2:

FuturLab talk about production process for Velocity 2X was reaaally good. I literally can't wait for this indie game to finally come out on PS4 :)!

 Viktor Antonow - design director at ZeniMax Media. Viktor talked a lot about the cities and the role of concept art in game production (Dishonored). He showed us a lot of great pieces of art, his own as well as Utopian architectural designs, which are great inspiration for sci-fi art.  He also talked about Dishonored art and inspiration from cities like London and Edinburgh.

Brian Horton - senior art director - Crystal Dynamics - worked on major franchises (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman, Star Wars). Brian talked about his challenge when working on Lara Croft from Tomb Raider series, a very popular game character. His task was to bring back the Tomb Raider brand and make it interesting again. He talked us through his though process and what he wanted to achive in a newest game with young Lara Croft. 


+awesome stuff from Kevin Carthew (Team17)

Oh and that thing below...

Possibly my fav photo, taked during Phil Gray (from TT games) presentation of new LEGO game: LEGO Marvel Superheroes. How many sleeping beauties can you spot ;)?