Street Fighter IV Video Game Premiere

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I had been a Streetfighter fan for many many years beginning in Jr. High, and through the years have seen a handful of Japanese anime Streetfighter cartoons (which were all awesome) and yes, I even remember Jean- Claude Van Damme playing Guile in the Streetfighter movie (1995).

So now, I'm grown, older and the years have slipped by without ever having to pick up any new news about the game. Once in a while though, I see the new games at the arcades and the last one I remember, featuring Marvel superheroes, that came out many years ago, I thought to be a bit of a stretch. The game play looked the same and there wasn't anything new that I felt I need to try. The old moves I remembered still worked woohoo! We need this game to be revamped.

Now, comes Streetfighter IV. Watch the trailer above and you'll see the same characters redesigned in a slick, tough dimensional way. Very nice. We also see a combination of refined 2D and 3D. The colors look great and the visual effects are done in such a way that enhances the in game cinematics to be better than what I had remembered the films to be growing up. This looks slick, complex and simply awesome. I'm definitely checking it out. For a while, I thought I would not see Streetfighter again, but it looks like they created something special here.

Oh yeah, by the way, it looks like they are also producing a series of Streetfighter movies, with the first one starring Chun Li and Vega. I've posted that here as well. When I see the movie, I'll definitely compare it what I've seen in the past and will also pay attention to how close they stay to the original storylines found in the game.

Rodri Torres: Animator

Rodri Torres is an animator out of Europe. He has a lot of great work on his website that are funny, entertaining and he's also a great animator to boot. He's currently animating for Ilion Animation and is currently working on their latest feature "Planet 51". Check out the trailer when you get a chance. The idea of the human astronaut being the alien, and the pet "Alien" is clever and hilarious.

Now, back to Rodri, I came across his site as recommended by one of my animation instructors Ruel. In his site, you will also see a pretty nice HTML tutorial on how to create a run cycle. I'm finding that now, I refer that tutorial to many of students as they too try to create run cycles.


The main run cycle problems that I see my students encountering is that they are not referring to the main poses that one learns when first learning how to do the "walk cycle", which are the Contact Pose, Weight, Pass Pose and Break Pose. These poses are essentially the same but can be modified to create a convincing run.

Check out Rodri's running tutorial. His explanations and examples are clear, and he's also got Quicktime movies so you can actually see the application of his technique. After you're done with that, be sure to check out his website below to see his drawing and character designs.

http://rodritorres.com/


Overall, very nice work Rodri. If you ever come across this post during a Google search on yourself, go ahead and post a response to let us know how you are doing. Thanks for posting the tutorials and the work.

Fire It Up!

Randolf

Guitar Hero : Slash and Metallica Commercials

This Guitar Hero commercial caught my attention the other day. It features Slash and some pretty darn good compositing and animation that totally caught me by surprise. Well done. If you check out the Guitar Hero site you'll see that the next version is called Guitar Hero Metallica.

And when you get a chance, check out the Guitar Hero Metallica Trailer below. I'm looking forward again to the frustrastion of trying to keep up with fast game play and cramped fingers. Looks like a lot of fun, the animation looks much better than the animation on World Tour and the locations look epic. Enjoy!

Superbowl XLIII : Commercial Television Ads

Ever year, Superbowl ads get as much attention as the game itself. This year many of the Coke ads ("Avatar" and "Heist") and a few movie ads got our attention (Transformers 2 and GI Joe). The game becomes a great show for us animation and visual effects enthusiasts.






Interestingly enough...Hulu, a video hosting website also had a commercial saying that they would be hosting many of the ads scene during the game. I thought I'd test out this little player below, post it on this blog, and so that you can see all of them, the most popular ones being first. They have a player that you can add to you blog that I though was cool. Its featured under the Careerbuilder.com ad which gets my vote for the "Most Giggles" Award. Too funny!







Enjoy!