Internship Week 8

This is the last week of our professional internship. We continued on our game project. I made a new obstacle which is a pig, which is drawn by my friend, falling from the top.

In the second stage, there are two new obastacles introduced to the player; falling pig and homing missile.

Obstacles seen in the first stage are also included in this stage.

The process of making this stage is the same as the first stage.

Other than continuing on our game project, we also have one company work. By using Maya, they want us to create a transition similar to the reference below.

Red Paper Pops out from nowhere

More Paper comes in the next frame

Turn into an arrow in the next frame (Last Frame)

The chief wants us to just use simple shapes and forms in this work. I use plane and pyramid. Then I use only the visibility to animate. We finished our last work at Aninzi and turn it in that day. The staffs will take our work to render and put it into After Effect to make a transition when things pop into the scene from nowhere.

On Friday, we have dinner with everyone in the studio. Then we say good bye after the meal. Our internship is over now. It was a very good opportunity for us to work on professional projects, learn new techniques, and learn the process of the studio. We all thank staffs of Aninzi Studio a lot for taking care of us until now.

Internship Week 7

We continued our top secret project in this week. We worked hard on it with a lot of fixing. Then we all turn our works in on Wednesday. It is a model for series that I do not allow to tell anyone about it. Then we continued on our game project.

We redo the Life Gauge, so it looks more interesting than the old one which is a very flat graphic. I made a new obstacle which is an angel. An angel flies from the bottom to the top without anything special. The player should avoid touching him or be damaged. I have also finished putting obstacles into the first stage. There are three kinds of obstacle in this stage; bird, angel, and rocket. I have to play it again and again to see if it is not too hard or too easy. I also give the game file to others to play, so they can give me feedbacks about it. Now, the first stage gameplay is finished. At first, I put too many exploding rockets in the early game, which makes it hard for the player to avoid damages. I ended up taking away all of the rockets in the early game and introduce them to the player in late game instead.

Because of the secret project, our game project may be unable to finish in time. However, it is a good opportunity for us to involve with a big project like that. This game project does not have a deadline and it is just our project to prepare ourselves for thesis which may be making a game. while the secret project is the studio project. Therefore, it is clear that the secret project is more important.

Internship Week 6

This is the sixth week of my internship at Aninzi Animation and Visual Effect Studio Co., Ltd. Last Friday, we started to work on the top secret project which is from the Japanese client. As it is a top secret, so I cannot write about it. However, I can write about what I learned from doing this project, which is modeling.

I learned about extruding the edge in Maya. It is quite helpful because we do not need to split the polygon first like when we extrude from the face. Also, I learned about the Bevel tool which automatically turn a sharp corner into a round one. Finally, I learned about how professionals arrange edges in an object, so it is not messy. We should not overuse edges. If there are too many already, we should fix it by deleting unused edges. The reason why we should make edges clean is that it can be fixed a lot easier in the future in case the client want it to be fixed.

Internship Week 5

It is now the fifth week of my internship. This week, we continued on our game project. We name this game "Down" for now in contrast to Pixar's movie, "Up". We may change its name again when the game is finished.

We have done several new obstacles for the game in this week. We have a UFO attack, which ramdomly choose one spot from three and shoot down a deadly laser blast. We also make a cloud in the foreground. We also count this as an obstacle even it cannot damage the character. However, it can disturb the player by blocking the sight. Other than obstacles, we also have an animation of the character being damaged or knocked out.

What I learned this week is the Action Script for the UFO. The code that makes it choose a spot to stop randomly.

Math Random code for the UFO

A scene with UFO, cloud in the foreground, and a character being damaged

Other than doing this game project, on Friday, the chief has a new assignment for us. The client wants this work to be a top secret, so I cannot tell much. All I can tell is that it is a 3D modeling work in Maya. This work is in a hurry, so we are going to finish it first, and then continue working on "Down".

Internship Week 4

This is the fourth week of our internship. The chief wanted us to think of a project and work together on it. We came up with an idea of making a flash game. At first, we think about making a puzzle game, the same kind of the PC game "Machinarium".

Machinarium

In this game we have to pick up items in the stage and use them to solve problems. However, we have limited time, so we tried to think of a game that is easier to make. At last, we came up with an idea of a cursor dodging game. Then we make a story for this game.

Our Game

The player plays as the boy who is kicked off the airplane. As he fell down, he encounters a lot of obstacles. The player needs to control the boy with the mouse to dodge obstacles such as rockets, missiles, and birds. Each obstacle is programmed differently, so the player needs to use different method to dodge. The boy can be hit only three times in a stage. If he is hit three times, the player needs to start that stage all over again.

My job is to program the game, both obstacles and the character. I have learned a lot about Flash Action Script 2.0. For example, how to make the character follows the cursor, and how to make the hit point bar. Also, I drew and animated some obstacles that are hard to program like missiles, and rockets while my friends drew and animated the character, background, and other obstacle.

Character follows cursor code

Right now, it is going faster than we expected. We hope to finish it in time.

Internship Week 3

It is the third week of my Internship at Aninzi. This week, we had some works involving with the green screen. The staffs taught us how to set the light to get a good footage, which is easy to key out the green. We should get the sharp edge shadow that leans to only one direction.

Another work that we got is masking out unwanted areas. It is a work for an internet game that use a live action footage. After we key the green out of the footage, some of the unwanted areas which are not green remains at the edge of the character. We use pen tool to draw a mask. The mask is at the substract mode, so everything inside the mask is cut out. We also have to animate the mask as the character moves, so it is kind of a hard work. It is even harder than when we studied in class.

We also learnt about the After Effect plug-in called Ultimatte Advantedge. The staffs use this plug-in to key out greens, and the result is quite good. Therefore, we installed it in our computers.

Internship Week 2

This is the second week of my Internship at Aninzi. Last week, as I had written in the last post, I got an assignment of animating symbols that they gave me in Flash. I continued working on it until it is finished. Mr.Saknarin, who is the chief, gave me comments he had toward my work, so I know what is good and bad. What is bad has to be fixed, so I got back to my workstation and fixed my work until he approved my work. After my work was approved, this old work came back to me later. The client did not satisfy in some points, so I had to fix those issues. After I finished fixing, I sent back to my chief. Then, this same assignment still came back to me. The chief wanted me to add some effects to give my work some more details.

In overall, I learned more about the working process. We finish our work, send it back to the chief, and we get criticized. Then we fixed and handed it in again. Sometimes the chief may see things different from the client. Client’s view is always right. Technically, I learned how to use Movie Clip symbols in Flash effectively, and how to use effects in Flash.