At 1/7/10 12:35 PM, jmtb02 wrote: I then realized that I left my wacom pen laying on my tablet the night previous. Infuriating.

Haha, I've done that before. Nothing is worse than getting angry at technology only to realize it's completely your fault. It's like that moment in a heated argument when you get that horrible sinking feeling as you realize you're wrong. Ah well, live and learn.

Yes. Having it be your fault is mega draggage. Sometimes though...you have help. Not too long ago, I posted this query about jpeg quality on NG in the lounge (which Luis was very kind to respond to). Well I found the problem. One of our poorly sighted clients, had used the zoom feature on the magic mouse and didn't zoom it back to normal. They were close, but not all the way. Therefore, every raster graphic, in every flash movie looked like a big steaming turd. I seriously was ready to murder a whole room of Adobe programmers...only to find out I was just being a fucking idiot. It hurts. :[

I'm doing a mini game in C++ for uni and I need some graphics.. I could do them myself and probably will but if anyone wants to do some space shippy graphics then that'd be cool. Just things like generic alien (or spaceship) bad guys, and a player ship or two >:/ no real animation needed, unless you want to add flames shooting out or a shooting animation or something.

Again, just if you want to :L

At 1/6/10 07:04 PM, Duchednier wrote: Did not like. Not at all, in fact, i wrote a GLOWING 6/10 review and made several pleasant comments such as "lazy animator" and "getting way too much credit for way too little work"

well you have to give him credit for animating it all with a mouse.

At 1/7/10 02:27 PM, liam wrote: Again, just if you want to :L

photoshop the background out of star wars ship screenshots

At 1/6/10 07:04 PM, Duchednier wrote: Not only that, but it was animated very poorly, not only re-using the same animations or character models repedatively, but sometimes even just taking models from past movies and re-colouring them!

I thought the animation was decent for the most part, but it did have some cringe-worthy moments. The part it really really lacked in was character design. I felt that none of the characters were memorable, and even now I can't recall what they look like. The pacing wasn't too good either, it was pretty slow moving throughout.

But for a 20 minute flick animated by mouse, I think he did an alright job. If only half of Newgrounds would take the creative leaps that Spike has. He may not be the best, but he works at it.

At 1/7/10 04:13 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 1/7/10 02:27 PM, liam wrote: Again, just if you want to :L

photoshop the background out of star wars ship screenshots

That would look so hilariously crappy.

Snow Snow for Lucy

Too much anime stereotype; that scene with the flashback of "Lucy's father" oh boy, that was a big WTF part. The characters were pretty insipid, nothing new there, however, I liked how he somehow at least tried to make emotional moments, although at times it was pushing it was too hard.

I thought the Snow Lucy movie was...

Shonen Jump presents Edward Scissorhands.

It wasn't horrible, but it really wasn't breaking any wild new frontiers either.

I liked it a whole lot more than Vulvagayumi Happy Day.

At 1/7/10 10:55 AM, adman1993 wrote: Turns out you got front page aswell congrats :D

also why the name? everytime I see it I great big ball bags and faggots. :/

Lol.
I like being a fag?

At 1/7/10 05:07 PM, PBass wrote:

But for a 20 minute flick animated by mouse, I think he did an alright job. If only half of Newgrounds would take the creative leaps that Spike has. He may not be the best, but he works at it.

Thats one thing i did give him credit for, he DID make a 20 minute movie, which is 5 minutes longer than my longest (khc 1.3), and it was a serious drama movie. The problem though i thought was that the story could've been told in probably 10-15 minutes and been alot more exciting, rather than boring, which i found it to be unfortunately :(

So I got my first (solo) daily.

Am I a good Flash person guy now?

At 1/8/10 12:10 AM, Kevin wrote: So I got my first (solo) daily.

Am I a good Flash person guy now?

The ad ruins it. you have to wait like 5 seconds when you get back to the directory before you can click on another name or else it'll black out 3/4ths the screen and you'll have to restart. It's a big hassle just for some chump change.

This is one of the most stunning pieces of CGI I've ever seen. Especially for a one-man job. Try to watch the entire thing.

Also, congrats the frontpage and medal winners.

@Xeptic that's fuckin' dope. Damn.

At 1/8/10 05:40 AM, Xeptic wrote: This is one of the most stunning pieces of CGI I've ever seen. Especially for a one-man job. Try to watch the entire thing.

I got 3 minutes in before thinking "Ok, I really need to read the description" and realising it's ALL cgi.. I was expecting something CGI integrated with real footage, but.. wow. I was watching it on my 22" monitor, at 1920x1080, that was immensely pretty (it also makes me think "Vimeo have a damn good flv player"). This is still unbelievable, after watching it - I know you see similar things in films nowadays, Avatar for example, but this is ENTIRELY CGI, and there are no flaws that I can see. The modelling and texturing was fantastic but the lighting was amazingly pretty - I play too many games I suppose, so I'm used to lighting being quite bad so I do notice good lighting. One scene with steps and clouds above, I was in awe. The directing and everything was also very very good.

At 1/8/10 12:15 PM, liam wrote: This is still unbelievable, after watching it - I know you see similar things in films nowadays, Avatar for example, but this is ENTIRELY CGI, and there are no flaws that I can see.

I know right. I'm happy I'll be alive when the day comes that computer generated images will be indiscernible (?) from real-life imagery, storytelling-wise that's going to open up loads of possibilities. Avatar looked pretty damn good, but it still had something comicy about it which made it looks less believable. Maybe because Pandora is so completely different from what we're used to seeing everyday.

Anyway, this thing mostly had buildings and other still objects in it, so that might make it a tad less impressive, but still, when the trees and plants come in - damn. Heh, I remember when Titanic came out though and I thought it looked life-like, yet, when you look back at it now it's almost laughable how bad that movie looks. So it might take a couple of years before we get to that point, but still...

Oddly enough...the native characters in Avatar were the things clubbing me over the head. Even though the motion capture was really good, I just never believed they were real. The landscape work and industrial design was tip-top.

I too wish for a day where video games are not called video games anymore. They would be called fictional experiences. There is a lot of work to be done to make that a reality though. I can spot a mental ray shader 5 miles away. :)

Ehhh im kind of annoyed actually with the obsession to make things lifelike. I wouldnt want to get to a point in video games where everything made is always this super realistic shit. Some of the charm in things is in the wonder and fantasy of it, in the crudeness of it. in the fact that yes i am a video game, i am not interested in real life, play me.

I thought you would say that. I'm not saying everything should look lifelike, point is when stuff should look realistic, like in Titanic, it takes away from the experience when it doesn't look lifelike.

Realism

I agree with Xeptic. I think that ultra-realism has it's place. Digital doubles, environments, and creatures in movies depend on realism. I think that sports games and other games more rooted in reality might adapt a higher sense of realism as well.

That won't stop games like Okami from being made. I don't think we'll lose our artistic sense that easily. Realism is the root of stylization. You must first start with something and then move all traces of reality. Pursuit of abstraction is far more dangerous to an art form than pursuit of realism.

Yay

Also, cool movie Xep

At 1/8/10 02:32 PM, Luis wrote: Ehhh im kind of annoyed actually with the obsession to make things lifelike.

I guess I disagree. I love seeing different art styles though - you played Borderlands, for example, that was fantastic, the cel-shaded 3D world was just gorgeous and I really enjoyed that, but when a game tries to be realistic, it might as well be as realistic as possible. Games are not going to be able to do this sort of thing for a long time though, because in film you can render a frame for 4 hours whereas in games you need to render at 1/60th of a second.. though games have made huge advancements over the last few years, of course.

In terms of film, I think it's a great thing having realistic CGI - being able to do incredibly surreal things (Transformers is a great example [good example, bad film], huge robots!) and making it look authentic, I love that. And of course I'm a nerd so I get hard if I see realistic lighting. I remember reading/seeing something talking about Finding Nemo and the producer or something was saying they could have made the graphics so much more realistic, but it would be pointless, because people enjoy seeing the cartoony style, it has a great charm to it. I agree, I doubt we'll see any realistic animated films any time soon because people enjoy that. However this makes films that blend CGI with film look even more impressive, because people are used to Shrek and then they see CGI that looks lifelike.

I would really love to see something like Shrek done with realistic graphics - just to see what it would be like. Character design would be much more difficult, for sure, and the effect would probably be horrifying.

At 1/8/10 03:52 PM, liam wrote: Finding Nemo... realistic,

i can see it now

At 1/8/10 04:03 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 1/8/10 03:52 PM, liam wrote: Finding Nemo... realistic,

i can see it now

He's beautiful :3

I think a lot of what makes CGI look 'realistic' is making things blurred like our own focal vision, and making things extremely textured. There could be a very smooth looking sleek wooden table and you could probably see it as CGI or real. But if you put tons of cracks and normal maps and stick that thing in mudbox or zbrush and it immediately looks 'realistic'. The flaws make things realistic. The smooth and sleek pandorians or w/e in Avatar look fake because they look TOO perfect. They are so smooth and stuff they look comical as said previously. Other movies have created more realistic creatures in other movies, just because they are evil dragon things with tons of detail and cracks and stuff in them.

Just my 2.5 cents

yes. .5 of a cent.

I rather like how we can break barriers with animation, and make it look 100% realistic as possible. Of course, restraints must be held as well. You shouldn't use 100% realism if its not 100% necessary. For example, the movie Up, or any pixar movie for that matter, what would the bugs in bugs life look like if they were 100% realistic and bug-like?

It'd be more creepy than anything :/

but with things like avatar, you can bring things to life that people only imagined, and its absolutely stunning :)

In videogames (i know someone brought that up), realism can be a phenominal thing! Such as of course Uncharted 2! The game was visually gorgeous, and so was the first for that matter. and i felt that i could connect with the human characters because they looked so human like. When drake was hurt in-game, you could tell by his facial expressions that he was injured.

and for the record, the game IS surreal near to the end, such as the first, which also brings things out of the normal, so its a nice mix of real and non ^_^

At 1/8/10 03:47 PM, knugen wrote: Yay

Haha, the only PM in there is to Kirk_Cocaine, and you have the same icon and everything as him, so I thought he'd linked to his pms or.. I have no idea what I thought. CONFUSING THOUGH DAWG :D

At 1/8/10 10:19 PM, liam wrote: Haha, the only PM in there is to Kirk_Cocaine

Underscores FTW.

Those were the days!

At 1/8/10 10:42 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote:

At 1/8/10 10:19 PM, -liam- wrote: Haha, the only PM in there is to Kirk_Cocaine

Underscores FTW.

Those were the days!

I'm pretty sure allowing ASCII characters in peoples names is what made Newgrounds so popular.

über big ups to PBass for referencing 'Okami'.