General Theme

It seems the general theme running through my three interests in progression.
Within the progression of these areas, there are some pretty interesting things to point out.


First, music has grown from what started in the 60's as a rebellious, loud, aggressive medium. Music was a way of pure expression and formed around current society and culture, and reflected the opinions of musicians on areas such as government.
Nowadays, although music is still considered a form of expression, it seems to have winded down on the chaos and anarchy it used to hold. Most popular bands now refrain from swearing, they maintain an approachable appearance and hold back on any form of aggression. Music in current times seems to be aimed to please a much younger generation than before. Ages as early as 8 will listen to newly released mainstream music, so artists must cater the style of lyricism to this, cutting out any swearing or anything which could be considered offensive.
In a way music is now more restricted, despite censorship laws being much more lenient than ever before.


On the other hand, both video games and film have gone the opposite way.
Games started very basic, and very innocent. Games such as Tetris and Donkey Kong needed very little effort to play and visually were very basic, but the addictive gameplay and need to beat high-scores lead their success.
Many modern day games pride themselves on the level of realism, or in some cases, ultra-realism. Violence in certain genres of video games has undoubtedly escalated. Street Fighter (1987, Arcade) had two characters fighting, but there was no blood. Fighting games released to date such as Soul Calibur V (2012, Multiple Platform), consist of weapon combat and involve a lot of slashing and hacking style fighting, spilling pools of blood and gore across the arena. As explained in a previous post, Mortal Kombat features a 'fatality' which rewards the player with an ultra violent kill is a particular button combo is pressed. This could feature head ripping, spine pulling, rub cracking ect., very violent visuals.
Film has followed a similar path.
Psycho (1960) is still considered one of the greatest films. The most memorable scene in this film is the shower death, where the killer stabs a female character to death in the shower. However, the knife penetrating flesh is never shown, only the impression of it. 
Film has progressed to show more violent and controversial. Final Destination (2000) and it's several sequels are films based on how many ways a person can brutally die. Head cut in half with saw blade, nail gun to the face, trapped inside a sun bed, squashed with gigantic sign, you get the picture.


I think this is going to be the way I am going to approach my first presentation; How these areas have progressed through time and why.

Research: Film - Effects

We are capable of creating effects to a much higher detail than we were years ago.
These effects range from costumes, to environment, to CGI.
I noticed the drastic change when watching the new 'Planet of the Apes' film.

Planet of the Apes, 1968

Planet of the Apes, 2001

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, 2011

These stills show the advancement in our digital technology to the point where these 'apes' become genuinely believable creatures. Development in motion capture have made it much easier to create CGI creatures that walk realistically.

Because every year that goes by, we see a new blockbuster feature released which is full of new CGI set pieces, our expectations in films are rising higher and higher, meaning less impressive looking films go straight to DVD, or worse, Syfy.

Research: Film - Animation

I'm going to start by looking at how film has progressed in my specialism.


Animation has had a huge boost from new digital technologies. Many animated films are created mostly on computers using advanced software packages.
But these resources haven't always been around.

Snow White and the seven dwarfs, 1937

Disney's retelling of 'Snow White and the seven dwarfs' in 1937 is considered the first full length fully animated feature. As technology was not as advanced as it is now, most of the film had to be drawn and painted out frame by frame. In total, around 1.5 million frames were drawn out to create the film, which took about 3 years to develop.
Although it did win awards for best animated feature, I don't think it would attract a young audience like it did back then.

Monsters Inc. 2001

The young audience today are attracted to likeable characters, not necessarily proportionally accurate, bright colours and a sense of humour which doesn't patronise them.

Research: Film - What do I find interesting?

I'm a huge film fan. When coming to university, I was on the fence whether to study Graphic Design or Media/Film. Obviously I chose Graphic Design, but when the chance came to choose Motion and Interactive design as a specialism I jumped to it, as it was the closest thing between the two you can get.
What I find interesting about film is similar to games, how we can relate to and feel emotionally involved in a film. How films can make us feel things, whether that is adrenaline and energy or sadness.
I also, like gaming, admire how they are made. As I have had experience filmmaking, I know how much effort it takes to get a shot look how you want it.
I will be looking into a little bit of the history of film, and how it has changed over time.

Research: Gaming - Living Another Life

As I said in an earlier post, gaming is a gateway to another world, or another life. This is in no way suggesting gamers are sad lonely people, on the contrary I find that gamers are some of the most interesting and creative individuals due to their broad minds.
But some games do allow players to live an alternate, digital life, and I myself have succumb to them.


The Role Playing Game (RPG) has been around for a very long time, but until development meant that games developers could introduce a deep enough story and an incredible amount of variables and in-game options, they were pretty basic.

Skyrim, 2011, Multi-Platform

One of the latest RPG's to grab the attention of a huge audience is 'Skyrim'. Players create their own fully customisable character, choosing a race (including elves, orcs, humans etc), gender, and appearance. The game is then played out depending on how the player chooses to play. If they prefer to use magic, they can level their character to cast spells to defeat enemies, or they can use ranged bow and arrows, or old school sword and shield combat.
Despite the missions being pretty much set, it is very unlikely that any two people wold have the same experience playing this game, which creates a unique bond between player and character.

Sims 3, 2009, Multi-Platform

The Sims puts the player in control of the lives of a number of characters. Whilst the player doesn't physically control the characters, they can tell them what to do, such as cook, eat, get a job, dance, ect

Players must look after these characters, otherwise they can die. The player must also build and decorate the house the characters live in using the money they earn from their jobs.

Mass Effect 3, 2012, Multi-Platform

Mass Effect, my gaming weakness. Mass Effect follows the story of Shepard, a human who must save the galaxy from a race of synthetic beings called Reapers. I'll not get into the story, because i'll waffle on forever because all three games are HUGE.

Again, the player can customise Shepard; gender, appearance, equipment and class are all variables. However, Mass Effect is heavily based on giving the player the driving seat. Everything the player does has a consequence to the story. If the player wants to save a civilian from a burning building and risk losing an escaping enemy they can. Or, on the flip side, they can be a renegade, and leave the civilian to die for the good of capturing the escaping fugitive. All actions have consequence, and the way the player interacts with NPC's (none-playable-characters) decides how they will react towards you. What is amazing about the series is that such consequences from the first could have reactions not only in the same game, but the next (or third, ect).

This whole ideology enforces an emotional bond with all the characters. Without giving anything away, I was so upset when my favourite characters died (which again, depending on play-style they could live or die).

It is games such as this which allow gamers to escape reality and enter a world where they are in charge, they decide what happens, and they feel they can really do something important. 

Research: Gaming - Violence

WARNING: THIS POST INCLUDES IMAGES SOME MAY FIND DISTURBING
There is a lot of speculation about whether video games make us more violent. Over time, we have been subjected to more and more violent scenes in video games.


The beat-em-up genre of games spans from the likes of 'Street Fighter' where there was little-to-no-blood to Mortal Kombat, where the player is awarded a cutscene of an over-the-top violent finishing kill if they press the correct button combo.

Mortal Kombat, 1992/93,  Arcade

Mortal Kombat, 2011, Multiple-Platform

Clearly there is an aspect of violence involved in these games, but I would argue they are fighting games after all. Someone not wanting violence wouldn't buy and/or play a fighting game.


It is not just fighting games where we find violence.
Arguably the most popular genre of game to hardcore gamers is the FPS (First Person Shooter). This has evolved from shooting people to close-quarters mutilations when a player gets close to an enemy.

Gears of War 2, 2008, Xbox 360

The added functionality of video games lets us 'melee' enemies, should they get too close. Some games such as 'Gears of War' take it a step further, and reward the player for getting up close. As seen in the image above, a close-up chainsaw kill is available to those brave enough the run into the fight.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, 2009, Multiple-Platform

Call of Duty is a huge FPS franchise. At the end of Modern Warfare two, the final scene forces the player to throw a knife into the eye of the main antagonist. Although he is a threat, it's pretty shocking to see.

Splatterhouse, 2010, Multiple-Platform

The Darkness 2, 2012, Multiple-Platform

Games such as 'Splatterhouse' and 'The Darkness 2' (seen above) force players to perform kills in the most violent manner possible. The more violent their kills are, the more points they earn to spend on upgrading their character, and regaining lost health.

Again, I would say it is shocking, but we are becoming more used to seeing this sort of thing due to the violence we see coming from real life situations such as war. 

Research: Gaming - How has it evolved? Continued

I have looked at how games started very basic animations and inputs, and how narratively they were very innocent.
But we know that over time they have progressively become more complex and graphically detailed.

Mario 64, 1996 Nintendo 64

On the previous post are images of the first appearances of Mario and the latest. This image is from 'Super Mario 64' on the Nintendo 64 (named so due to its 64-bit graphical capability). We can see even with cartoon-like graphical styles such as Mario, advances in technology have vastly opened up new possibilities.
But what about games that are supposed to look 'real?'

Tomb Raider, 1996, PlayStation

Tomb Raider: Underworld, 2008, Multiple-Platform

I've looked at the 'Tomb Raider' series as an example, as I have played the majority of them.

I remember playing the first 'Tomb Raider' game on my PlayStation and thinking the physics and the graphics were amazing. When we compare that to what we have now, it doesn't look very pretty. 'Tomb Raider: Underworld' is the latest of the 'Tomb Raider' games released to date (not including spin-offs). We can see in this image the textures are of much higher standard.

One reason we now have access to hold so much texture in a game is due to the media it is stored on.

'Super Mario Bros.' was stored on a cartridge. These cartridges could hold about 8mbit of information. That means the coding, graphics, everything had fit on 8mbit of hardware. This increased in advancements in consoles such as the Nintendo 64, but was still a fairly low amount of data.

When CD-ROM was used as a storage media in the likes on the PlayStation, the size of data available upgraded to about 600MB, around half a Gigabyte. Although this was much more space available, the results of the space are seen in the 'Tomb Raider' image above.

DVD-ROM was introduced in next-gen consoles such as the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. This gave game developers 4.7GB to play with, 8 times as much data as was previously available.

DVD-ROM evolved to dual-layer allowing double the data (8.5-8.7GB) which is currently being used in the Xbox360.

Blu-Ray Disc is only used in the PlayStation 3 (in the games industry), and is most commonly used to hold high-definition films. This does give an advantage to the graphics capabilities of PS3 games, allowing a huge 25GB of data to play with. However, most games are released and multi-platform, and rather than create graphics packages for each console, games developers tend to create one and allow the consoles graphics capabilities to power the visuals,meaning most games look very similar on each console. The exception is games created exclusively for the PS3, then you get graphics like this:

Uncharted 3, 2011 PlayStation 3