Digital Animation Between Film and Games
Nick Foster of Outspark, Gilles Garceau of Ubisoft, Lyle Hall of Heavy Iron Studios/THQ and Todd Pilger Animator, Surf’s Up. and moderated by Jane Pinckard of CMP Game Group. One interesting issue right off is something like Sponge Bob, since he’s actually 2D, but then has to be brought into 3D, yet still look 2D. The panel is saying that most of their work now is done in 3D, it’s the new pencil.
The pipeline between film and games came up again on this panel and is something that people are obviously excited about and anticipating.
Another big point is that games companies are really media companies. That is an important paradigm shift for the games world, but I do believe that it is a critical and important point for games companies that haven’t realized that yet.
Creative intimacy is another theme that is being sounded again on this panel. The basic point is that the closer the team that makes the game can be to the talent and the creators of the film the better the game generally turns out. An interesting issue brought up yesterday was that the Fantastic Four game actually didn’t use the actual movie stars, but that led to a better result since the stars were too busy and they voice actors had the time to develop an ensemble team, which is actually the point of the Fantastic Four.
An important difference between film and games is that in film character can be a real driver, but in games plot needs to be the driver since the player is the character.
Another interesting thing that was mentioned on this panel was the resurgence of 8 bit games… Make one yourself!