Animation and Gaming Today

  

 

     It is no surprise that as technology has improved, the graphical capabilities of computers and video game consoles has also improved. Back in the day, pixels were all the rage. Everyone was excited about a tiny Italian plumber made of a small amount of blocks. They were called pixels. The little guy would run around, jumping on turtles and crushing little brown people. Today, objectives and level design alone are much more complicated.
   

     A number of years later, we got Wolfenstein 3D. Everyone flipped. Suddenly, everything had gone in a completely diffierent direction. You could move up, down, left, right, forward, backward, in literally any direction. It was an exciting time. Believe it or not, things were about to get much more advanced than even this with the dawn of the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1, and all the other systems that really kickstarted the 3D gaming scene.

"Prose is an art form, movies and acting in general are art forms, so is music, painting, graphics, sculpture, and so on. Some might even consider classic games like chess to be an art form. Video games use elements of all of these to create something new. Why wouldn't video games be an art form?" -SAM LAKE, interview, April 25, 2004

    Videogames have quite a long history. Looking back at the capabilites of early computing techology, we can see we have improved a lot. Games like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End show us true photorealism. Many players forget they are even playing a videogame. With the release of VR technologies, the possibilities truly are endless. I've just started dipping my toes in VR technologies, myself. I can't wait to see what sort of adventures future technology takes us.



Written by Matthew Malone

Movie Reviews: "CoCo" and "Olaf's Frozen Adventure"

Reviews Written By Michael J. Ruhland



CoCoMichael's Movie Grade: A+

Review: Incredible pure Pixar magic at its best and a must see for all movie lovers.

When I was watching Cars 3 for the first time (and yes I enjoyed that movie) I could tell you each little thing that was going to happen next. This is far from the case with CoCo. Just when I thought I knew where the story was heading it did something completely different. However not only was it completely different, but it was so much more powerful than what I saw coming. This is an extremely moving movie. This is hugely because the characters and environments felt so real. I believed from the bottom of my heart every little thing I saw on screen and accepted it as real. The characters could have easily been simple movie stereotypes, but they are so much more. Each facet of their personality is extremely well thought out and come together to make a completely believable character. The environments are likewise filled with an extreme amount of detail. I can't even imagine how much work probably went into something I probably saw on screen for no less than a second. The story itself is fantastic. As I stated before, you never know what is going to happen next. Despite this though each plot twist seems to naturally flow out of the story and characters and there is nothing in this film that feels forced.

It is hard to praise this movie enough, but every movie fan out there needs to see it.

Olaf's Frozen Adventure

       Michael's Movie Grade: B+

Review: This short was a delightfully enjoyable little film, and I was happy to get both this and a feature film for my money.

The best parts of this film were the humor and characters. While I know many people seem to be tired of Olaf, I find him a great character, whose ability to detach body parts reminds me of silent era cartoon characters like Felix the cat or Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. He is extremely delightful here, as he is funny and good hearted and brings a classic cartoon energy to this film. This film is quite funny throughout much of it. While it is hard to describe why a film is funny, I found myself laughing at quite a few of these jokes. The short also gives us a greater insight to what happened when Elsa had to hide from Anna, and these scenes are very touching and flow naturally out of the characters, we already loved from Frozen.

On the downside this does feel like a story we have seen before, and Anna and Elsa's part in the story seems too brief.

I have to be honest, I don't know why people hate this short so much. I find it delightful. I know many people complained about having to sit through a 21 minute short before the feature. However to me the short felt like it went by extremely quickly. Also to me to get a longer short and a feature just made it feel like I was getting a very special movie going experience that is too rare today. Personally I would love if Disney made more 21 minute shorts before their feature films, but sadly that doesn't look like it is going to happen.

-Michael J. Ruhland