Contextual Studies

During my research for contextual studies, I quickly decided to write about gaming application for health and fitness, mostly focusing on the physical side. Early into the research, I found some toxic studies using very old quantitative number samples of BMI to claim gaming and television was a direct cause of overweight and obese children. Sadly, I found articles written this year, using information from 11 year old studies, which used 20 year old samples to claim they are relevant today, safe to say during my essay draft I went on a bit of a rant. Luckily upon reflection I was able to edit out my rant, sum the argument down to one sentence, contextualize it and move on.

I believe a weakness and a strength of mine during CS is that I research as I write, often I find many, many sources, but a lot of them end up getting replaced by better sources. Sometimes however I forget where I had a source and some information becomes almost irrelevant because I can't back up my point. For the most part, I managed to avoid that here.

Here are some of my sources for my essay;

Aiton, E. (2010). Study endorses EA Sports Active effectiveness. Available: http://www.play.tm/news/30497/study-endorses-ea-sports-active-effectiveness/. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

IGN. (2014). GDC: Sony Project Morpheus VR Headset for PS4 Hands-on. Available: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/03/20/gdc-sony-project-morpheus-vr-headset-for-ps4-hands-on. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Lah, K. (2009). Tokyo man marries video game character. Available: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/16/japan.virtual.wedding/. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

McGonigal, J. (2010). Gaming can make a better world. Available: http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Oculus. (2014). DK2. Available: http://www.oculusvr.com/. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Official EA UK. (2010). EA SPORTS Active 2 TV Ad . Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da45dCKiWmQ. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Rani, A. (2013). The Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24614830. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Rowan, C. (2014). Ten reasons why handheld devices should be banned for children under the age of 12. Available: http://movingtolearn.ca/2014/ten-reasons-why-hand-held-devices-should-be-banned-for-children-under-the-age-of-12. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Sixense. (2014). STEM System. Available: http://sixense.com/hardware/wireless. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Robertson, A. (2009). Can You Really Get Fit With Wii Exercise Games?. Available: http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/can-you-get-really-fit-with-wii-exercise-games. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Tremblay, M S. (2003). Is the Canadian childhood obesity epidemic related to physical inactivity?. International Journal of Obesity. 27 (9), 1100-1105.

Virtuix. (2014). Videos. Available: http://www.virtuix.com/videos/. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Zuckerberg, M. (2014). Mark Zuckerberg I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to.... Available: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971. Last accessed 14th May 2014.

Animation reel

After much work, I managed to create what I later found out to be too many animations, however the animations I did extra were useful in this reel to show how I intended the movement to appear in the game engine.

I had these animations running on a constant turntable so some of the walks and runs look a little strange, but that is 90% due to the obscure angles at the time during the turntable.

Personally I feel that the animations went pretty well, running backwards being my favourite, as the left leg extension

Unity

I left importing animations into Unity far too late, however quickly picked up how to import animations and get them to play in the engine. I feel that if I had given myself an extra week to do this, I could have had all my animations working with working movement in the engine, however that is a lesson learned for next time, but for now, here is my short in engine captured footage.

I kept the 3rd person angle as seen in the footage I captured from the game itself, partially so comparison could be made, and partially because as I said before, it is the most common way for people to play the game, therefore is the most important for how it looks.

There is very little I feel I can criticize my animations for, apart from a small area under the right arm on the back where the mesh comes to a sharp point during some animations, I feel this is my fault as I created a mesh with a character creation tool, rather than creating one myself.

Captured Source Performance

With a friend, we discussed, planned out and performed between us some of what we both agreed on to be better ideas for undead poses and movement, he was able to perform somethings better than I, and I was able to do some better than him, so we swapped and change. I also pulled a muscle during filming so had to then take a more static approach the the animations I did, compared to the previous runs and walks I had performed.

Source footage of Undead

I recorded this footage from world of warcraft so I had a constant reminder of how the current animations for the undead movement look.

Just simple running around captured with FRAPS, I kept the 3rd person view becasue from experience, that is the most common view to play the game from for casual play, raiders are the exception, who will zoom out to the point of it doesn't matter what your character looks like, because they need to see everything else more than themselves.

Undead

The undead are a race of humanoids who are essentially humans risen from the grave. They have green and blue hues of skin, skeletal joints and claws instead of fingernails. Lore wise, undead players are members of the Forsaken, a subsection of the undead, ruled by Sylvannas Windrunner, an undead High Elf who was slain and returned to life by the Lich King. They have hunched postures and appear haggard and tired.

I think that the Undead would be an interesting race to animate as they are different from the other 4 options, as well as not having any strong limitations or difficulties with the actor performing the animations.

Night Elf

Night elves are another race who are at one with nature. A druidic people, they live in forrested areas, building their houses and cities among and up trees. Being one of the oldest races and once immortal, with a very rich history in the Warcraft universe, the Night Elves are a calm, patient people with very little outward show of emotion. Night Elves have purple or blue skin, long, narrow, pointed ears and glowing eyes. They are also very tall with broad shoulders and a narrow waist.

Night elves would be an interesting race to animate, as with their rich history, there is a lot to them to draw upon, the only downside is having the actor perform to how a realistic Night elf would move.