UGAAM Development

I wanted to showcase what I have achieved so far on the UGAAM game, so I will. Unfortunately the Remake version is a work in progress doesn't have all the best bits on it yet. In light of this, I'm going to provide links to both versions for whoever is interested, with a note on what I'd like to demonstrate with each one.

Link to the Remake (Work in Progress)

The great difference in this version is the addition of the Menu Screen and the improvement of the Options and Instructions Screen. Also the Animations:

    -Experience Orbs move with intricate design and reactivity.

    -the Wizard faces the Cursor

    -the Eye Gauge moves out of your way

    -and there are pop-up Notifications added

Link to Demo Version

The reason I want to showcase the demo version still is the complicated collision simulation responsible for making the Boulders bounce off each other and allows them to be pushed away by your spells. The scripting for which will take time to build properly and has not yet been added to the remake.

Rendering 3D, stage 1

I wanted to put my hand to making a 3D renderer for a game environment, and while it obviously doesn't fully render yet, getting the program to continually plot positions from virtual 3D onto the two dimensional screen and then to be able to move freely through that virtual 3D space is the first step to that end.

Click on the Image to try it out

The controls are horrible at the moment simply because on this project I will be concentrating on completing the rendering side of things before looking at the interface, as the renderer is nearly the only point of this project, though once completed I may implement it into 3D games if the new task requires it.

Note the vertices flying around the cube, the programming for their movement was just done quickly to show that the renderer works with a map or data that can be changed at run-time. This means it will be suitable for moving elements that will be wanting to be added to a game level later, like a drawbridge, or more commonly, moving enemies or targets.

Lost Temple, Flash Game

Please try out my new game by clicking the link below!

The Lost Temple

It may take a while to load.

Okay! UGAAM is still in production, I ended up re-writing the entire code after a few epiphanies during the coding of this game, the Lost Temple. I have been learning Flash Actionscript self taught, and these are only of the first two or three big projects since starting from knowing absolutely nothing about Actionscript.

So in this particular case with the Lost Temple, the long loading time, and the possible lag during gameplay is something that I will be able to avoid next time I code something of this scale.

I am still learning but I am no longer an amateur in the way I write, structure and organise my code. This was demonstrated by my ability to go back to the UGAAM code after a long break and not need to take any time re-reading it before I understood enough about that particular currently-two-thousand-line-long code structure to start changing and adding code straight away.

Demo Flash Game by yours truly

THIS IS A LOWER QUALITY VERSION to fit on this site, to see
it displayed at the correct resolution please Click Here.

I am truly excited to present the Demo of a game I have been working on, hastily called U.G.A.A.M (untitled game about a magician). I created this to demonstrate my relatively new-found Flash ActionScript abilities, and I am very proud of the results. The idea of the game, although it isn't at that stage yet, is to have many different spells and particles that react differently to each other, so it becomes much more about quick wit and skill than reflexes. I do know how to programme sounds effects and music, and will be asking people to compose for this game now that it's up. Now with all that out of the way, I hope you have fun!

Child of the Moor - Final Year Film

So the University's Degree Show is over, and here is the film I submitted for it.

Child of the Moor - Nick Thorne from Nick Thorne on Vimeo.

The Child of the Moor is inspired by the things I imagine to exist in the moorlands
of particularly Scotland and Ireland, and is fuelled by the desire to convey internal
emotions and thoughts. This animation is about a feral boy, raised by emotionless
demons, who has not before met another human, when he does the capacity
to and longing for care and bonding reveal themselves.

And my final year film is finally done!

Well I haven't updated my blog for a while due to mainly the pressures of this project, but also that none of my side projects are at a far enough stage to showcase yet, although one should be shortly!

So here we go, the first new post in a while although I shouldn't be involved in a project as heavy as this for a while. This isn't the entire film, I plan to upload that after the university's degree show, though I hope you are intrigued and eagerly await its arrival. 

Final Film Mid-Production Taster

I have not settled on a name for the film, but it will be three minutes long and
focus on a boy who was raised by emotionless demons, and longs for affection.

So I am currently in the middle of producing my final film for my third year of
the animation course at UWE. Just to prove that I have been busy working
on it, here are a few parts of the production that exist as more digitally available
entities than the stacks of drawings.

Scripting Tests 3.0

In my previous post I mentioned that I wanted to make a Flash Game and had started learning ActionScript 3.0 in order to accomplish that. These were only made to test the application of what ActionScript I have learned so far, so please forgive how ugly they look.

 This test above is just to make sure that I can have a player control the avatar via

keyboard, and make the avatar animate and move through a world.

 This test is to show that I can have the avatar move along a bumpy

surface if need be and calculate things like falling acceleration.

Action-Script 3.0

Concept for a game, hover your cursor over the picture

Special thanks to Rebecca Deakin for sparing the time to show

me how to get .swf files hosted on the internet

I have recently begun learning ActionScript 3.0. The Flash piece below is just intended as concept for a game I would like to animate and programme. I need to admit that this particular piece was scripted in ActionScript 2.0, so that I could get a little practice before I got hold of the later version of ActionScript, but so far using ActionScript 3.0 I have successfully scripted tests that include:

>Moving a character left and right via keyboard, and adjusting the background accordingly
>Loading and/or unloading extra characters when the player reaches a certain point  

>Making a character walk over uneven ground or fall to it, without sinking into it

which I will upload here soon, although they will have no aesthetic consideration in them as they are only scripting tests in preparation for making the main game.

     I am excited to announce that I am working on my final year film. Below are the character designs, I want to digitally paint the backgrounds, the backgrounds in these images have just been pulled off the internet for now just to give the two characters their context. The story's synopsis is that Matt the hiker accidentally falls to his death, but the Grim Reaper is late getting there, leaving his unbeknownst soul alone and vulnerable in a twilight version of the world as he knew it.

"I Wish" Animation

Voice Over by Nick Thorne

Vocals in the Background Music by Megan Green


Below is the Line Test for the animation without the
background or any computer visual editing.

Sea Folk

My latest animation, done entirely using vectors, to learn how to use

the pencil tool and manipulate vectors in Adobe Flash.

MY SHOWREEL HAS BEEN UPDATED!

Not much more I can add to that title, I've been busy making a few animations, 'Grace' in particular during this module at university, and now I've put them into my old showreel and updated it. Also I've managed to sort out a few issues with the quality of my showreel since the last one, as each time I use Adobe Premiere and export from it I gain a bit more experience in it.

Lip Sync test

Someone had recently pointed out that I don't have enough examples of Lip Sync on my blog, so I'm adding one now! It's from last year, when Dylan Shipley and Louis Jones of Sun and Moon Studios came into the university to give us a tutorial on Lip Sync. This was done quickly in Flash, and the sound was given to everyone to synchronise to, it's not mine, in fact I assume it's taken from a film.

Wolf Jump

Another short animation I created to update my showreel.

I looked at the anatomy of wolves and watched a few

videos of how they run but I had to animate the jump

from my own intuition.

A Vampire's View

[A still from the animation with some cloud cover taken away]

This is a relatively quick animation I made to go towards updating
my Showreel. The aim was to show that I can create animations
using more detail than just flat colours.

LOLTR - Episode 1 Grace

Nick Thorne presents:

A short, Student Animation spoof based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Animated in Flash, and then Post Production work done in After Effects.

Wolf Digital Painting

Click to enlarge

A painting I did in Adobe Photoshop, taking two hours. I was inspired by coursemates' digital work and after the success animating a quadruped I thought I'd give Photoshop a proper try. This was done referencing a photograph of a wolf in the same pose.

University Work Blog

    I've recently started a new university module that I haven't fully planned out what I'm going to do for yet.
The module is a bit scary... we haven't been set anything to do. I'm basically just going to use the time to practise and experiment with animation, and also develop my flash skills. I'll be keeping a Blog of my progress so that my tutors can follow what I'm up to, but you might as well too if you have time and are interested!

http://uweanimation-nkthorne.blogspot.com
[You may notice a slightly different colour scheme on the other site, this is both to really separate my developmental work from my showcase work sites... and for a little giggle.]

Using Inverse Kinematics in Flash

I decided to practise a more 'Cut Out' style of Flash, so after watching a few tutorials
on how to create the Inverse Kinematics Armature I created these very quickly
just to try. I'm not obsessed with dragons, this was just the first thing I drew
as it was just the movement I was interested in testing at this point.

Dragon Roar from Nick Thorne on Vimeo.

Dragon Blast from Nick Thorne on Vimeo.