PS1 CGI Study

I've set out to learn CGI animation. The hyper realism of today is too advanced for a complete beginner like myself. So I'm starting with low polygon work. I grew up playing Playstation One video games, so that is what I am studying. I never owned an N64, but I am also studying that as well. Maybe it's the nostalgia factor for me, but I really like this look. And also, both doing things simply for the irony and Millenial nostalgia for the 90's is such a trendy thing that I'm hoping making the graphics worst than what everybody else is doing can actually work in my favor.

The first study is of a bathroom scene in the game Parasite Eve 2. I am using the program Blender to model this.

Original

My Study

My study in wireframe mode without textures.

I made the mistake of making the floor size too big. You can tell by the space between the open door and the toilet. I realize that a smaller space is better because it adds the effect of claustrophobia, which is scarier. So I tried again to make the floor space smaller like the original by bringing the walls in. For some reason the texture disappeared from the trash can next to the sink after doing this and I can't seem to bring it back. I've had trouble with textures in this program. Perhaps I should download the newer version.

This is a horror game, so there are muted colors, dim lighting, decaying paint on the door with stains, and the floor is covered in dirt and grime. All of these things give an essence of being on the verge of death to up the horror factor. The material world reflects the dead zombies rising from the grave.

Comparing it to a similar background from Huckelberry Hound, you can really see the difference of how comedy has much brighter candy coated colors and horror has such dark muted colors. Atmosphere goes a long way towards how the audience is impacted emotionally. One weird thing I've been thinking about is how the goal of horror and comedy is similar. Comedy aims to make people laugh, horror aims to make people scream.

The values are especially the most noticeable. High key values vs. low key values. The brightest white in the horror picture is about the same as a medium grey in the funny picture.

SUPER STRONG 3-POINT PERSPECTIVE

When I first rendered out my scene, I noticed something interesting. When comparing it to the original, the Playstation rendering has really distorted perspective. My original renderings look like a one-point perspective drawing.

The original does not use one-point perspective nor two-point.

It uses three-point perspective.

It almost has the effect of a fisheye lens. The three-point perspective is not only extremely strong, but for as small and close of a scene this is, it is very distorted over the top.

This could have something to do with the cameras of the game engine. But, the distortion definitely adds to the creepiness of the horror genre.

The only way to pull this off was to pull the focal length on the camera extremely far down then move the camera physically into the scene super close almost touching the camera to the curtains.

As a person who's mainly studied cartoons, one final thing I've noticed when modeling this study is that in cartoons, backgrounds are very symbolic. But in realism like this I have to remember to add in all the real life details like light switches, electrical outlets, vents, trim, etc...

I'm doing all of this to apply to a short film, called Eerie Justice, that I am working on to post on Youtube. I've already hired voice actors from Fivver to read the script. As well as added in sound effects and music to finish the audio track first. So just like in hand drawn animation, I can animate to the sound and tailor the performance of the characters to the voice acting.

It's going to be a horror, so to create the logo, I first did digital studies of the logos for Parasite Eve and Resident Evil.

Applying what I learned from these studies to create my own logo that is made to look like the start screen of a PSX Horror Game:

I want to add in a Japanese subtitle, but I do not know Japanese. And I'm afraid online translations will come out incorrectly. I don't want it to be the reverse equivalent of the notoriously bad video game translation in Zero Wing from Japanese to English in which it is said, "All your base are belong to us."

Perhaps there is somebody I can hire from Fivver to do a proper Japanese title translation. Because it sounds really funny for an American to create a logo in which it is pretended as if it was created by a Japanese company translated into English. Plus, I hired a Japanese voice actor to do one of the voices and if I show it to him, a Japanese title better be correct.

I wish I could some day legitimately create a full length video game and actually release it in stores for the original Playstation One on the disk, and make people go buy old used Playstation Ones off eBay or  at GameStop to play this brand new game on a decades outdated platform.

Next, I did studies of both the Playstation and N64 logo start screens in Blender. I forgot to save the Playstation file. But here is a video of the N64 logo study. Some of the colors may be wrong.

Here you can see that the "LICENSED BY NINTENDO" text was actually created in Blender and rotated to face the camera.

Here's a digital study of the Sony Playstation startup logo. Not animated though. I have no idea how to animate gradients the way they did in the animated logo.

Here I've applied what I learned from those logo studies to create a graphic for my animated short that sarcastically promotes the idea of using 90's Video Game style of graphics. As if using a decades outdated style is some kind of cutting edge technological advancement ahead of the curve to be proud of.

I got the idea from seeing reruns of the TV show "THE FUGITIVE" in which they announce in the intro that the show is, "IN COLOR!" with a title card saying it.

Here is my first animation study with a low poly character I designed roughly after a few PS1 game models. It has no texture on it yet, but this animation is a study of a spin kick by Lei Wulong in Tekken 3.

Lei Spin Kick

My Study of the fighting move

I modeled the character's proportions using the Andrew Loomis figure drawing book that I am using to learn how to draw realistically. The character currently lacks texturing because I'm having some weird issue where after I texture it and save, when I open the file back the textures are gone. I've textured this guy up at least twice already. I don't know if this is an issue with the program or if it is just because I'm new to this am making a mistake.

I've starting learning CGI animation out of frustration from hearing people call hand drawn animation 2-D animation. Even the Emmies lists hand drawn animation as 2-D. That's how widely misunderstood this is. The Emmies are wrong. The public just does not understand what dimensions are. Two dimensional images are triangles and squares. Anything with cubes, spheres, and cylinders is three dimensional whether drawn by hand or modeled in a CGI program.

I keep saying that hand drawn animation is 3-D animation and that it is basically the exact same thing as CGI. Both use the exact same principles of three-dimensional perspective to create an image. To me it is like the difference between drawing a line freehand or with a ruler. One is more organic and the other more mechanical. But both are still drawing a line. Nobody ever listens to me or they dismissively laugh at me when I say this. So I figured if I just learn to do both hand drawn animation and CGI animation that people will believe I know what I'm talking about when I say things like that since I can do both.

I also find it funny that there seems to be such a thing as seeing traditional hand drawn animators and CGI animators as such entirely different types of people. There even seems to be wars or arguments about which is better. It's hilarious to me the idea of pouring in the hard work so that I can one day master both to show none of that is true.

I've had this dream for a while now of one day working on some kind of project that combines live action video, hand drawn animation, CGI animation, puppets, and stop motion animation all in the same shot at the same time. My TV show pilot that I pitched to Adult Swim already had characters switch from hand-drawn, CGI, and stop motion from shot to shot in the same scene. But I've yet to combine things in one single shot.