Today I was accepted to my first university, University of North Carolina Asheville, and it also happened to be my first choice school. I am ecstatic about this development as this school will allow me to further pursue my concentration in game design and digital arts with a special program that takes classes from different state schools and organizes a program suited for me and my area of interest. I am really happy to have been accepted because this school because as it does have a very strong art program, it is not just an art school. UNCA has has a huge engineering program and marketing program. What I find most interesting is that the school encourages the different programs and areas of study to interact and sometimes even requires classes not in your intended major to be taken so that you can understand how to work with that area if the occasion requires it in the future.
The school Itself is wonderful but it also just so happens that it is also located in Asheville, one of the coolest towns in the Appalachian mountains. The opportunities are endless for the area. The local economy is seeing a steady upward trend and the community is very pro-arts. Not to mention, the town is in the Appalachian mountains. I would love to learn more about that gaming side of the community, as I know from experience that the town is full of nerds, and see how I can perhaps be influenced by that. I would not be surprised if I had many volunteers or partners around to help me if I were to continue making games outside of the school curriculum. I am really happy to have been accepted and look forward to all the opportunities I will have in those years that I spend there. I may even continue to blog in collage if I find time to do so because this is a very good way to keep track of my progress. Thank you all for sticking it out with me, we are almost there!
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We have still been working on editing our video projects, however this time we must make the sounds for our own videos. Let me start by saying that is is much harder than it looks to get a clean sound that is convincing given the materials have to make it with. I only have my phone to record the sounds with and the actual sounds produced are almost never convincing enough to use. For example, we must make a noise for a bullet case to hit the hardwood floor, since I don't have either the casing or hardwood floors at my school, I had to improvise using the sound of a mini metal wrench and a bottle cap cut together as my piece of audio. When I have all my noises, I paste them over the music I choose for the project (of which may seem like a strange choice but I think it's fitting for my interpretation of the story). One important thing I have learned about editing sound in a video is to NEVER put a piece of audio over another because it cuts the one under it of. I learned this the hard way by accidentally putting a sound over my music and creating a mini hole in the song… Overall, however, this project is actually very satisfying, I like to fill in the missing parts of things and I'm filling half of what is needed in my own way and it's interesting to compare that to how others have done it.
We are Still working in Audition and Premiere in our game design class and so far I think I prefer Premiere because when I was working in the program (being an average teenager who spends too much time on the internet) I was thinking about all the videos I could take and manipulate to my own amusement. Both Audition and Premiere are examples of non-linear video and sound editing systems. What does that mean and why is it important? Well, that means that instead of selecting and arranging each and every image or sound into a specific order, you instead don't and the computer does that for you unlike Linear video editing. If you are wondering why this is important, it is not, linear video or sound editing is never used anymore so it is somewhat irrelevant unless you are going into the history of video/sound editing. Anyways, it is important for someone as a game designer to learn and understand how to use non-linear video editing techniques because that is what is used in any game making program. I have never heard of a game made with linear editing programs since the 2000’s. The only time linear video editing is still used is with news media's because you can begin editing the material as soon as it arrives. Two examples of companies using linear editing systems were Sony and Ampex, which no longer use them very much. Most all other companies that work with film ir gamess or stuff relating work with nonlinear editing. If you are still confused about what nonlinear editing and linear editing is, do not feel bad, I am as well. To be completely honest, the notes I received on the subject were pretty limited and Wikipedia didn’t help much either.
For a while now we have been working on a group project and I have not been able to make a post, however, our project is now finished and I can focus on other work and get back to regular blog posts! To begin the first blog post of our second quarter, I am going to reflect on the brand new programs we are beginning to use in our Advanced Game Design class. First we started working with Adobe Audition and sound editing, then we were working in Adobe Premiere with video editing. Both of these programs will be useful later in Game Design as most, if not all Game Designers incorporate both sound and video into their games. But not only will this be useful to me as a game designer, but can also help me for school projects having to do with making a video or recording a podcast. When we begin making games later in the year, it will be crucial that we understand how to edit video and sound recordings if we are to make an appealing video game. This week in Advanced Game Design we made yet another infographic (yay). This time, however, our infographic had to do with legal issues in the game design field. The assignment had us looking into the legal side of game making and what it takes to protect your game or image as a game designer. There were eight different legal topics we could make our infographic out of, I chose to focus on Trademark. Since we basically did the exact same thing last year in Game Design, I didn't learn a lot of new information, however, I was amused by how far some game companies would go to "protect" their games. One thing that we had to include in our infographic was a court case that had to do with our legal issue in a game context. One of my peers was doing some research and he stumbled upon an interesting case involving Nintendo trying to copyright the platformer genre. Anyway, one thing that was challenging about this project was trying to find a court case about trademark involving video games. Nobody really copies game logos because they usually have to do with the game itself. One thing that would be hard to avoid in the game design industry is originality. Nowadays it seems like every game has already been made and that awesome game idea that you had in your head has already been done. I feel like if you make a game, you could be sued by another person who made a similar game to yours before you on the terms of copyright. First blog post of my junior year, hurray! It's good to be back at school with all my friends. The year has started off pretty well, besides the chaotic class schedule, and already we have finished our first project of the year. This project was almost identical to one we did last year on game careers. We started off with research on a few game career choices, then we picked the career that we found best suited our abilities. After that, we started creating infographics to outline the career in detail; the annual wages, what to expect from the job, the qualifications required, ect. While researching about each career, I determined the career that matched myself the best was animator/game artist. Even without the research, it's obvious that that is what best fits me. I already knew what to expect from the career, so the information I gathered didn't surprise me. One thing that was challenging though was creating the actual infographic. I went through many different drafts before I stopped with the one below. My biggest problem was the amount of text I used. An infographic is supposed to catch your eye and interest you in the topic. My infographic was too text heavy and would discourage anyone from reading it. Like last year when we were making infographics, I really struggled with conveying the information I needed to in a small amount of words. For someone who is as visually oriented as I am, it's surprising that I struggled making this infographic look nice. That is something I will need to work on in the future.
In the last reflection, I spoke about how the previous year has helped prepare me as a game designer. This year has also helped me greatly develop as a game designer. One of the things that was really helpful was the rigging unit in 3DS Max, because it taught me how models move in a game as well as what I have to do to make that happen. The biggest thing that actually began my game designing was the game maker unit, where we made our first official game (with a great amount of help of course). Aside from the game skill, we also went into depth on the history of both traditional and electronic games. This helped us as game designers to understand truly where these games have come from. The traditional aspect of our game design year helped us understand that game design is not specifically for video games. It was important for us to understand the other types of games and how they functioned in terms of the design process. Although the history aspect of this year was helpful, I feel that less time was needed than actually spent on that unit. Other than that, overall this year in game design was pretty rockin and educational!
In Game design, we are reaching the end of the year, so it's time to reflect! In the first year of game design, we learned a lot about the basic sand history of games as well as programs that will help in the making of games. The skills developed last year have been invaluable to what we have done this year, however, some of what we did last year were more for skilled or experienced game designers than the n00b's that we were. The 3D unit was one of these unnecessary game design topics we covered. I am certain that they would be more than helpful in later years when working with game engines that use those programs, but for inexperienced game designers, I feel that spending that much time on that particular thing was too much. One unit that I feel we should have spend more time in is the Photoshop unit. When making games this year in Game Maker, I had to edit the sprite images using Photoshop and I feel that i was not nearly well enough experienced in it to make entire game's worth of sprites. Overall, Sci-Vis was really helpful in understanding the basics of game design, but more time should have been spent on the basics and techniques that we would actually use in the following year than on something that we may not use at all in a game design career.
The review quiz for unit two was much easier than the first review quiz. It may just be that it was shorter that the last quiz, but this quiz was very easy in my opinion. For this quiz, I also attempted the quiz without first reviewing any of my notes. The first time I took this quiz, I was also very distracted which may be why it took me so long to complete. One thing I must do now that I know what to study is TO GO THROUGH THE NOTES! This is the only possible thing that could help me for the test. I do know the bulk of the material, but I still do need to study the material because I know I am rusty with this stuff and it couldn't hurt to do a bit of extra studying.
As we are finally starting to review for our end of year test, we have gotten multiple review practice tests. Seeing as how I got a 65 on my first attempt without looking at any notes, I know that I really must study hard for this test. However, it is also true that I may have not looked at this material in a year, so that it is a given for me to do poorly. One thing that I must review in unit 1 is all the traditional game stuff, because I could barely remember any of the actual history... Aside from that, I had a pretty good idea about the stuff on the history of video games, esrb rating, and the ethics thing. Once I review the other material, I have no problem acing that portion of the test.
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AuthorMy name is Anna Marshall, nice to meet you! check out the 'about me' page for more information about me! Archives
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