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Viewing the full circle of Digital Arts in the VIEW Conference in Turin.
Monday, 09 November 2009
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Danté's Inferno was brought to life by Electronic Arts and set free here today at VIEW. The question was poised here at VIEW by Jonathan Knight, Executive Producer at EA's Visceral Games Studio: Is Danté Alighieri laughing or rolling in his grave? What reaction would the luminary have to EA's adaption of part one of The Divine Comedy? The action/adventure game is based on the pages of this masterpiece, and Jonathan is adamant is looks pretty good for 700 years old.
Game play from EA's Dante's Inferno shown for the first time at VIEW.
Danté's astonishingly blood-thirsty history, with sculptures, paintings, puzzles, creative lines, shows him to have been Europe's first game designer! We almost lost it too. In 1500AD, there were 30 copies in print, but by 1600AD there were only three. The Nine circles of Hell would have been lost to history. While the EA game isn't true to the original story, there are enough clues and triggers to please the purists.
Jonathan Knight, Executive Producer at EA's Visceral Games Studio. In an earlier session, Mike Springer, one of the chief engineers of Google Maps, gave us a glimpse of the efforts underway to bring GoogleEarth into the 3D world. Bringing SketchUp into the mix, the cities of the world can be built in the 3D space. With that, every year 15,000 miles of new road is laid, so updating the screens of GoogleMaps is an immense job.
Google is actually doing a bit of good while they are at it.
A close-up view into how Google Maps is supporting heroic work.
Springer told of Chief Almir and the Amazonian tribes whose lives are being eroded by loggers and mining companies who come in overnight to clear the forest. By enlisting people to upload images of how the forest looks, the raping has been curtailed. 'Google Earth Heroes' making a difference.
Henry LaBounta began his lecture by asking a question. Why are studios working so hard at recreating life-like CG effects from pixels when they are starting real life in the first place? Reference is the most important crutch for a VFX crew. Color correction is the best giveaway to digital representations of real locations. Textures come second. Lighting is the key. Henry pointed us all to a site, Chromoholics.com. Check it out for help in setting up your color management system. He showed the effect of the Bleach ByPass film EA used in 'Need for Speed' series to create a distinct look.
One of several invaluable lists of advice from Henry LaBounta's presentation.
LaBounta really should do more of these lectures. He gave real-world advice about generating the very best with what you have got available.
Jeff White and his team at ILM did not only have to trump the effects of the original Transformers film from years before. He said the director JJ Abrams was good herding people into the right place and extracting amazing work from them. They had to create robots for the IMAX experience and keep them true to Michael Bay's vision. There were 53,000 pieces in the Devastator, and the aircraft carrier sequence took the effects team to places they never dreamed of going. 26K plates. There were 51 minutes of ILM effects in Transformers 2. That's a big job.
Michael Giacchino was direct and forthright in his keynote speech at VIEW in Turin. His first piece of wisdom came after hearing extended applause and great rousing words from Glenn Entis who he introduced, to then introduce him. [This drew a laugh]
VIEW Keynote speaker Michael Giacchino. "It's not about me," said. Giacchino has created melodies for video games, TV shows, animated shorts and feature films, most notably 'LOST', 'Alias', 'The Incredibles', 'Ratatouille', 'UP', 'Star Trek' and 'Land of the Lost'.
Giacchino's composition for the opening sequence of 'Up' was analysed in his keynote. In his presentation, he played the wordless sequence of 'UP' where we follow the life of Carl and Ellie from early on, through to the present day. Michael walked us all through the key changes as the emotional roller coaster bit on down. 'Star Trek' was big in Michael's life but when it came to conceiving the biggest job of his career, he didn't know where to begin. It almost swallowed him up after 20 false starts. When he'd almost thrown in the towel, his producer put him back on track. "This isn't a movie about space," he said. "It's about two guys who become good friends."
"The story is the big bit. Whatever you do, tell a story."
