It all begins with the people who foremost called the core team. They brainstorm in meeting after meeting to hammer around the concept. How the game will look. How it work. Then they plan up the production schedule assigning who do what when. They breakdown the game on paper and color code the components. Then they post them on a bulletin board that will act as with productions nerve center.
Now, work on the artistic concept begins. Artists sketch out the characters and backgrounds on paper in a scene by scene story board. Meanwhile, graphic artists recreate those story board drawings three dimensionally on the computer. This step enables the development team to use the latest and computer animation technology to bring the game elements to life. They add colors, textures, shading and of course, movement.
After developing the preliminary version of each character, the animator superimpose a skeleton. By manipulating the skeleton they make the character move. They experiment with different movements until they decide which ones they will use for the game. The animators have to design every movement each character can potentially make in the game. That 700 movements for this main character alone. Once that's done, they flash up the character's features and consumes.
The evolution of the characters from the first pencil drawing to the final version is quite remarkable. Other animators work on the backgrounds, the games playing field. Once they have a rough version laid out, they refine it by adding details, colors and textures. To give it depth and dimension, they use virtual lighting to create shading and shadows. To advance the storyline, this particular video game is interspersed with one minute animated movies. These segments called cinematics or animated in high resolution to produce the top quality image.
The interactive game on the other hand is in low resolution because computers can't process high res images quickly enough for fast moving play. The animators have to create every character twice in both high and low resolution. Meanwhile for the cinematics, they animate the story board using rough draft characters. This is simply to calculate the timing and to map that at clear path across the backgrounds. So the characters don't collide with the scenery.
To make the cinematics action look realistic, they use a technique called motion capture. The animators video tape themselves performing the action, then use animation software to reproduce it on the computer. Computer programmers create the video games menu settings among other features. Computer engineers design the artificial intelligence, the brain that runs the game. It's made up of thousands of computer codes. For the cinematics, actors record the characters lines in a sound studio. An audio technician mixes the voices with music and sound effects and synchronizes everything with the action.
Now they take the video game out for a test drive. Do the characters move the way they are supposed to? Do they going they are supposed to or do they run into trees and walk through walls. This is the development teams last chance to rid the games of any bugs. After that the company can finally market the video game and hope it becomes a hit.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services