Designing a game

    A game should really define what you would really do if you were given a chance to live a fictional life. Think of all the things you wanted as a child, even if they were weird or simple. And actually you might come up with a block-buster game.
1) Determine what your game is about and what genre it would most fit in.
2) Get some scrap paper and start drawing some concept art. Even if you're not an artist, just draw everything you would dream of that would fit in your game. Start thinking about the overall them of the game.
3) Plan how would you develop your game. And what things or programs would you use to develop the your game .
4)Gather your friends' opinions, Do some R & D(Research & development) and use the internet as it's meant to be used. Never give up even if the goal seems to be too far.
5) If you have settled on a program or two that would help you develop the game, learn them and get acquainted with them.
6) Get creative! Define your objects; get your concept art and start modelling based upon what you drew. If you don't know how to model then leave everything alone and start learning how to model. you'll get the hang of it, it's pretty easy if you think about it. But make sure you've got all the basics so you wouldn't frustrate yourself in the process.
7) It's not necessary to model first. If you're a programmer kind of guy then settle to getting the dynamics of the game right then apply the models or have a friend who is knowledgeable about graphics to help you in the process, if not all. Use simple building blocks in your game(eg: primitives) till you get to the modelling part.

A note to all the lazies out there, there is no excuse to stop doing what you are capable off If you've successfully done at least one step of the above, then i see no reason why could be incapable of going further.
It's not hard, it just needs some of your time and perseverance.

Improvising

The sole title of this post is not nearly a mistake, nor a coincidence. What i'm wanting to emphasize is the importance of improvising; not only in film-making or game designing, but in your life as well. As i stated before in one of my posts, that there are surely guidelines, or a scripture to follow when you're doing a certain activity.

 But this doesn't deter you from the fact that if you find yourself stuck in a particular something, you have the choice of making up your own mind or decision in that matter. Anyways, I would like to present to you a couple of examples in which I have been a victim of guidelines ( a victim of my own brain,actually).

1- When I was learning after effects, I never knew that there were adjustment layers, so I had to Color correct every object in the scene as well as the original footage, I didn't even know(at the time) that you could copy effects and paste them to other objects as well .But what I really did is that I messed about in after effects after some time and I found out that i can copy and paste effects (I was happy as a bird, a hummingbird to be exact) .  So in short, it was a long night...

2- There was this other case that was related to cinematography; in which image/video stabilization was a pit for me, a really deep one. Anyhow, I resorted to using my brother's bike as a dolly. and later on i used a combination of a DIY stab. rig and the same bike.

So yeah, not much but you get the overall idea.

Since the title of this post is "Improvising", I would like to note that to accomplish something you want in a film or a game, you would need a satisfactional amount of smaller elements in your scene or level. That's where this simple phrase " Some of each makes you a peach". Hence, the peach here is your goal or the wanted result or effect. Let us be honest here, how many of you out there are tired of the fact that there is a humongous amount  of vfx artists that do their effects in a vague manner(I'm not saying that i'm perfect or anything). But at least try to make your footage or elements used in your shot look like the real thing. Resort to techniques no one have ever thought of before, even if you have to go big and use a bit of your budget. What really matters is the final result. I'm of course speaking here to those of you who has the budget to do a project and can't accomplish the aforementioned things.
For example you want a realistic fire effect, you have 2 ways to go:

• Use or create a cg fire element( a bit limiting and time-consuming)
  
• Get out your pyrotechnical-ish side and get yourself some firewood and a some gasoline(BE CAREFUL!!) Light 'em up, but make sure you've got everything under control, firstly and lastly!
  Lay your lit materials in front of a green screen and try for heaven's sake getting an HD camera or just borrow one  for a change . And if you have a microphone you can record the firey noises as a bonus.
  Make sure you have a friend with you at the time of filming so if anything goes wrong you would have someone to aid you).
• Film it and key all unnecessary things in after effects (you might need to do some manual rotoscop-ing work)
  

Don't complain if you find everything to be hard at first. That's just how it is, but it's really fun if you do it safely.

Oh, I nearly forgot: If you dont know how to use Mattes in after effects, I suggest looking for a tutorial on mattes. Whether they are luma mattes or alpha mattes, they both are really really really important and you'll find out why if you didnt already find it out to be so. Luma mattes are layers that changes the transparency of the original layer according to the brightness or "whiteness" of it. Just experiment and you'll get the hang of it.

If you need anything regarding VFX or game design or even if you want to have a normal chat just contact me @ nja.4rtist@live.com

Great Resources to help you with Mastering VFX

I know that it's been a long time since I last posted something, but I was a bit busy doing some personal work. In the mean time, i would re-emphasize the importance of being self-taught. I hope you have been doing some digging(not physical digging, ofc) and whatnot in the past couple of days, because I have got a couple of really awesome resources that would help ease your frustration in dealing with VFX.

A pretty useful Handbook called "The Core Skills of VFX"; In my opinion it's a masterpiece of written material that will surely & positively help beginners or intermediates in editing or compositing. It has it all,: from basic techniques of visual editing to finishing off your CG work with the "cherry on top". Alright, enough  talk, here is the link(just right click and save as...) :

• http://www.creativeskillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_16673.pdf?2

I know it's pretty tempting to look at all the eye-catching imagery in it, but we're not done yet!

Once you've got that, go to videocopilot website and make an account(if u want). There are amazing tutorials there for after effects, and is hosted by yours truly, VFX Guru Andrew Kramer ) He also gets into other applications (3ds max, fumefx, etc)  & and even makes tutorials for them.

Ok, and that's that. I really apologize for not doing any actual tutorials for anything, but the simple matter is this; time is a really scarce resource for me(nowadays, that is...).

So till next time, cya!