wall flip fail

- Iain

fridge boxing

- Iain

EBUCs Cover

Here you go, its all in the same style as the poster etc. I still have a couple of things I'm working on so expect more stuff before the presentation.

football fail

- Iain

Quick Squat

Quick Walk Cycle

Scale

So which scale would you prefer? or shall we change it?

All rigged up!

- Iain

nicer?

A few rendering issues going on, but good? no good?
-Iain

Ebuc squat

The riggings messed up, i've just started working on a 2nd version of this guy so that he looks more like the ones in the picture below.

i also just changed the outer wrapper and main wrapper widths of the blog, added 100 pixels. can't figure out which bit of code is doing the messy bit though.

-Iain

better feel?

Just saw this and thought that's a good look! what do people think?
- Iain

could this be your man?

This is, as far as i know, fully rigged and ready to go!































































I'll admit I spent pretty much the whole time messing round with rendering and it's eyes, haven't rigged it yet. should this be the montage character?
- Iain

Coke can+pencils+matchbox = tredmill

EBUCs Artwork

Ok, here's the EBUCs game logo and the EBUCs promo poster.

EBUCs are a lot more diverse than those shown, of course, but the composition is busy enough as it is and painting all the accessories etc would end up in a very cluttered picture. For that reason, I went with something closer to Matt's original designs.

EBUCs look ridiculously sweet and happy, I know. I got a sugar overdose painting this, but I wanted something bright and colourful to catch the eye and also something that would look good as a PC wallpaper or poster on someone's wall.















I tried to make the logo funky and humorous. I left it in b/w but it can be easily customized color-wise.


Feedback please!

~Olympia

Library Symbols

non animated mock up

that's where i'm at so far!
- Iain
(The video should become available soon, youtube's doing it's weird processing thing)

Snow Boarding Mock in RL

Hand Glider

Thought it would be cool if he could fly around the room....

making some props, struggling with ideas... I thought jousting might be cool.

Ideas would be welcomed.

Wee dude to animate

He doesn't move yet, that's the next step
- Iain

Symbols for Iain

I'll do others if they don't really work with your animation...

will upload the psd to docs if you want to use 'um

Yeah...

just realized i did the same as ken, buggr. been playing around with rendering stuff.
- Iain

HalfPipe

Coulden't help me self!
- Iain

More Legs

like / no like?
I'll rig the ones people like, their just geometry at the moment.
- Iain

Ebuc Snowboarding Animation

There are quite a few problems... I'll fix them one day.

Ebuc Snowboarder from Kenneth Stewart on Vimeo.

artist meet

had a wee chat yesterday, talked about the accessories for the ebucs.
when you start the game and make your own ebuc, the stuff that donna has done so far is good! we can stick with that.
the other extra stuff would be bought with real money / points earned in the game.
the stuff would be to increase the ebucs fitness, intelligence, creativity and beauty.
fitness:
tread mill
hula hoop
trampoline

Intelligence:
Books
glasses
manacle
bubble pipe

Creativity:
Easel
musical instruments (piano, drums, triangle, kazoo)
garden

Beauty:
hats
dress up stuff

feel free to add more!
their was also a thought about having some things to be cruel to the ebuc, like slap / whip / flail? the girls weren't too keen on this!
also, each item has 3 levels - home made, cheep and expensive. the ebuc gets more out the pricey ones...

Ebuc moods would be on a sliding scale with 7 levels, if it reaches the happiest mood it might float away and if it reached the saddest / angriest level it would run away then if you started another ebuc and entered it into a competition the old one would come back and sabotage it to get revenge.
also, the combination of features you choose for the ebuc at the start would result in it tending towards a specific mood, kind of simulating a personality. the moods could be shown in the shade of it's colour - vivid meaning it's happy, dark = sad / angry, pale = ill

also if you didn't sign into the game for a while the ebuc would get sad/ depressed/ suicidal

a few more ideas were floating around but not discussed much - you could send it away to ebuc school, send it to a friends house (if an ebuc was sent to your house you would have more to play with but the owner would have to trust that you would treat it right and not start slapping it about loads)

- Iain, Donna, Suzanne, Olympia

Website Update

Hi all,

I am making good progress on the website template and I hope to have a rough version published by the weekend. Everyone can then give feedback on improvements etc...

I thought it would be a good idea to promote the concept with some social networking, so I am going to set up an ebuc facebook page, flickr page ( for artwork display), twitter page etc... all with links back to the website:-)

- Suzanne

Art Style

Hey,

I have made a little character customiser in flash that I will upload to the blog now.

Obviously the bitmaps need to be swapped so they look better and the body parts fit together etc. So I would like to be able to meet up with the artists at some point to to discuss the style of characters before I go any further.

It would also be cool if everyone could think of some ideas for "accessories" for the ebucs that can be unlocked and give them special attributes that I could add in to it and what these attributes may be. Would need some info on specifics of the "competitions" or assault courses - whatever we decide on - for this, so it all fits together.

Cheers - Donna

meet 8th

still good, need to meet up some time next week and get stuff moving faster.

iain - free anytime except tuesday morning

james - free anytime before 5pm monday, before half 4 on wednesday

- Iain

someLegs

- Iain

Keyframes of Animation

EBUCs origins etc

I've been trying to come up with an original idea for where the EBUCs came from but since there's little room for political drama in a Tamagochi game, I ended up with the following:

• EBUCs are little aliens, who accidentally destroyed their own little planet far, far away. They landed here and need to be trained to adapt to the new environment/grow strong to fly back. If you decide to give the player some goals, mechanical parts could be the reward for certain challenges and the ultimate goal could be to build a new spaceship or something similar.

• EBUCs are programming code gone very wrong. Some nameless poor chap spent many sleepless nights developing an advanced artificial intelligence but after a computer crash, the file was corrupted and the sophisticated AI in development shattered into hundreds of wacky EBUCs.
• They only exist in virtual space and they still display fragments of intelligence and personality but unlike the original AI that was intended to be serious and knowledgeable (think Cyc) , EBUCs are silly and fun-loving. They like playing games and small rewards make them happy.
• I generally imagine them conscious of themselves and each other, with their likes and dislikes, capable of at least some emotion and possibly reproduction. But they are fragments of unfinished code, after all and that leaves room for interpretation as to how smart EBUCs are and what are their limitations (which, I assume, will be decided according to our limitations, programming wise).

On a side note, here's a nice art style. Take a look around the rest of their website as well. I was thinking about going this direction with the promo stuff. What do you guys think?

~Olympia

meet 29th

They're still lovin this concept!
for next week
James - record intro / in game / ... / music
Iain - build + rig some more assets + charicter
Ken - competition mock up
Matt - video tracking in max with a charicter for an example video
Donna - flash video of making your ebuc
Suzanne - web site
Olympia - background story for the ebucs (keep in mind it needs to be open for the players to create and customize their own ebucs)
Mark - chill


- Iain

Donna's Ebucs 3d

Did some variations on the oblong fellow... Not as may as Iain though. :o

vQuick 3d

a bunch of quick models i'll spend more time on them after the weekend!
-Iain

Ebuc Assets

Here is an example of what you can do with the photoshop document I'm about to load onto google docs. Everything's on a different layer so you need to look at which number you want and go to that layer.

I've kept the bodies as simple shapes at this stage, I think it works well though and will make it easier for modeling. Feel free to edit the file, make changes, and add in any other ideas you have.

The miscellaneous things are a bit crap right now but I was getting tired and just made them up as I went along. But I was thinking, maybe these can only be unlocked after completing some task, and then you are only allowed to wear one at a time as they give you special "powers" eg. shoes make you faster, hitler moustache turns you into a bastard, whatever.

I'll work on improving the images and maybe we could upload them to the website and make a better way of putting your character together? I'll also start looking at different expressions for the ebucs as the facial animations are possibly going to be 2D?

I'm sure I had more to say but that's quitE Enough for now!

-Donna

Some of the changeable options we could have when user creates their ebuc. Sorry it's not great quality, I'm working on a photoshop version right now that I will put on google docs so you can move everything around and experiment with different options.

-Donna

Trampoline

Animation to follow.

Whats happening??

Im under the influence that the job roles of the group are getting slightly blurred with a lot of people designing,modelling and animating their own Ebucs. Am i just out of the loop, are people working together??

The google docs isnt being used, unless for some reason you all dont have access. But if you do please start, itl allow everyone to keep track of the projects progress a lot easier by seeing what others have been getting up to.

If anyone could let me know what is actually happening it would be much appreciated


Mark

Did some of a walk cycle...

It looks a bit wonky when it snaps back, a few frames are missing.

thought update

got this from a chat with andy, game power - (what drives you to play the game / what does the player get out of it eg civilisation gives you the feeling of controlling a civilisation, the sims you controll their lifestyle... )

they seemed to like the ida of a tamagochi thing, so nurturing the ebuc growing it...

ideas from this meet,

using the ebuc website to network, maybe finding people who have created similar ebucs or crufts style competition / race / fights...

Donna's idea - have the ebuc on one symbol. introduce another symbol for water or any other affecting element. so if the ebuc walked towards the water you could take it away / make it chase the water or chase the ebuc with something elce.

to have individual ebucs - each base character has a set of different eyes / legs / mouths which you can choose a combination of at the start. we could just model all the eventual outcomes for one set instead of programming flash to edit 3d stuff.

Music - have a generic riff for any mood, as the ebuc gets angry / frustrated turn up the distortion, as it gets happy / satisfied fade into acoustic. - this could be done by recording each level and a transition phase or does anyone know of flash being able to distort it's own audio?

things we need to get started on:

back story behind where the ebucs have come from

logistics of how the whole thing would work together

audio - background music

foly stuff

a set of base characters - design

changeable design things (eyes...)

3d - at least one of them with all the changes

animated

papervision

a set of affecting objects (water, fire, tredmill...)

website - symbol download

competition area

networking / meeting area

story stuff

about...

also, for the final hand in we're never going to get the whole thing working so different things working independantly and some mock up's need to be done.

say...

a short animation of a competition

a run through of the networking thing

at least 1 character working in flash with an affecting object

a short animation of a bunch of other affecting things and characters

I know their must be more but it has fled my mind.

- Iain

It's Alive!

-Iain

Broken Box Ebuc

Unfinished ebuc Model... not sure if its built to be animated, maybe James can give it a once over .