Website Creation & Hosting

          As I currently have no knowledge in website creation using coding language I will need to rely on websites that allow website building through the use of 'drag and drop'. The easiest to use that still allow me to have custom designs that I can create in Photoshop are Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and Dunked.

The first 3 in that list are well known for website creation and I think to be honest can be looked down upon by industry professionals as the sites aren't tailored for the people trying to get into the games industry, that being said with a lot of customisation the sites produced by them can look professional.

Dunked is probably the better of those choices. It seems to cater to the creative type of person who isn't looking to show off their business or start online shops. It seems to focus on portfolio showcasing.

"79,188 creative people including designers, 3D modelers, illustrators, artists, models, architects and more use Dunked to showcase their talent" - Dunked.com

Here are two good examples of that:

http://angeloferretti.dunked.com/

http://marcomazzoni.dunked.com/

These examples are of course not videos, which is what I will need to be showcasing, however I've looked at their site builder and it is very easy to have a video showing as the first thing you see.

The monthly cost to host the website so that you gain your own domain name and personalised email, among other benefits, should be considered, as well as the freedom for customisation when building so that I can implement the 'do's-and-don'ts' that I covered in PPD1. From those sites that I looked into the costs are as such:

Dunked:

• $6/Month for 'Freelancer' package as paid for with a year subscription ($72/Year) which equates to approximately £42 a year.

SquareSpace:

• $8/Month for 'Personal' package as paid for with a year subscription ($96/Year) which equates to approximately £57 a year.

Weebly:

• $4.08/Month for 'Starter' package as paid for with a year subscription ($48.96/Year) which equates to approximately £29 a year.

Wix:

• £5.16/Month for 'Combo' package as paid for with a year subscription that equates to £61.92 a year.

All of the listed packages have similar features included, such as storage and bandwidth. If I were to choose on at the moment I would choose Dunked because they are tailored more to people such as myself as well as being in the middle ground in terms of cost per year.

Choosing who to build and host your website with can be integral for allowing a possible employer to see your work without hindrance, something I think Dunked caters for the best so far.

Showreel Revision

          For my showreel I had the initial plan for the contents to show in this order:

1. Intro 
2. A3DG module animations
3. Ladder course animation (1st part)
4. Attack animation
5. Lip sync animation
6. Recover animation
7. Ark game intro
8. Ark gameplay
9. Showcase of animations in ARK
10. MoCap recording and apply this to a character
11. Idle Animation
12. Ladder course animation (2nd part)
13. Outro

I now have an altered version which I changed due to revising a realistic time scale in which to produce, render and composit. I've also made these changes as I think this new version helps to represent my strength for the type of job I am aiming for, character animator for games.

Latest showreel content order:

1. Intro
2. Ladder course animation (1st part)
3. A3DG module animations
4. Idle - Norman animation 
5. ARK game logo moving into gameplay
6. ARK animation spotlight of both humanoid and vehicle character (gameplay still going on in background)
7. MoCap recording and application to character (In game too?)
8. Struck - Norman Animation (may be replaced with 'Struck' animation)
9. Ladder course (2nd part)
10. Outro

I have swapped the 1st part of the ladder course animation with the A3DG (advanced 3D graphics module) animation as I believe the ladder animation is my strongest at the moment, though with the completetion of A3DG I will re-evaluate this decision. The lip syncing animation has been removed as I think I haven't been realistic with time constraints and therefore will not have enough time to produce a lip sync animation.  The ARK gameplay will be shown briefly, but soon moved to a background whilst the animations I did in the game are at the front. If I have enough time I will put the motion capture animations in game to show the full pipeline of myself start with low-end mocap and taking it through clean-up to in engine use. I am also tempted to show the running animation, however I don't want to have too many animations of the same character and look as if I am flooding my showreel for the sake of it.

The 'Norman' animations are here, in just a view port recording. More work will be done on the rendering process so that they transition in my showreel nicely.

Idle:

Attack:



Run:




Struck: