PROJECT REQUESTS: FILM GAME CONVERGENCE AND GAME DESIGN CONCEPTUALIZATION

“Spider-Man” and additional “Star Wars” are IP I would like to work on. Incorporating Gensler and NBBJ architectural wayfinding principles in the digital environments on “Spider-Man The Movie: The Game” for the Sony PlayStation was initial graduate research, followed by “Auto-Rigging Dinosaurs in Python” at The Ohio State University ACCAD program; as an advisee of the ACCAD Director who was the former head of Animation at The Ringling School of Art and Design. Ideally, I would develop a technology that automates the character rigging process of the same character in a feature production (“SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER VERSE”), a visual effects production (“SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME”), and a video game production (“SPIDER-MAN: PLAYSTATION 4”), with one common joint based naming convention where the divisions’ three separate assets could use the same animation data on all three divisions. If this were in addition to the creative direction for the designs of the environments for PlayStation IP, that film game convergence pipeline that I design for Sony would also incorporate a modular setup system for all PlayStation properties. In this scenario, through a graphic user interface that I would engineer, if a team at PlayStation wanted to technically construct a character that is for say a biped, they could mix and match Sony Imageworks film “Spider-Man” arms with PlayStation “Drakes Uncharted Fortune” spine and “God of War” legs… all through drag and drop code. This is similar to the QA work I did on ILM’s Block Party Oscar winning rigging software at Lucasfilm. This should pay seven digits through salary, stock, and bonus: up to 10 million annual. I am guesstimating, for Sony, based on what I’ve seen online in regards to quality of product, I could complete this modular design, which would work in Autodesk Maya, for Sony in approximately 8 to 12 months with two to three engineers assisting which would handle more of the algorithmic work load- with me handling the code structure. This modular system should handle “skinning” as well and would be adaptable to add more features. Note: this developed technology could also be developed on other Intellectual Property such as Halo (XBOX and TV show), The Lord of the Rings (WB GAMES and Film), Harry Potter (WB GAMES and Film), Batman (WB GAMES and Film), and Star Wars (Lucasfilm Games and Film). This should save company character cost by a third, and have a common animation library to save additional money. With a core library system, a PlayStation developer should be able to test their converged rig from PlayStation Seattle on “Ghost of Tsushima” with a walk cycle from Los Angeles PlayStation’s “God of War”, and be able to export and build both in game. It is possible that this work could be completed by developing another PlayStation Studio for "convergence" out of Columbus, Ohio. However, the engineers brought on board would need to be qualified with previous AAA video game or Visual Effects experience: ideally having studied from a top 10 ranked engineering school such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, or Carnegie Mellon. This core team of three to five eliminates the Sony studios reinventing the wheel every time and saves development money… Dr. Boba Octavius... Caesar.

 

The second challenge I would like to tackle is the one that this blog is centered on. As the Wizarding World of Harry Potter expands in games and films, more exploratory content will need to be produced. By the films alone, the majority of the scenery has taken place in England. As DLCs for expansive video games get developed, it is possible that more “Hogwarts” style schools will pop up in different cities throughout the planet in this world: a school for the students to attend, and a shopping area (Hogsmeade) for them to purchase supplies in retail. What would be the challenge, would be to first identify where all of the different school locations would be (Rome, Moscow, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Prague, etc), identify what the key features of the architecture of that time period are per city (maybe in 1900 in Tokyo a lot of Bamboo was used on the roofs of first level buildings as opposed to brick in Prague), and then design plugin technology based on object oriented programming where you take a base design of a Harry Potter building in Hogsmeade, that JK Rowling would approve of, of course, select the object, execute the operation, and through procedural design the building would change to that city’s period architectural style. The workflow would then be, spending twenty hours on a base polygonal building, then through this technology, instantly procedurally designing a new building based on that style cutting your design production in at least half per building. So, if there were a Hogsmeade in five cities, and a stylized building took 40 hours to create the long way, and a base building prior to the technology took twenty hours, and each Hogsmeade had thirty buildings in it, as opposed to the art team having to spend (5 cities X 40 hours per building X 30 buildings) or 6000 hours, they could use this technology for (1 city X 20 hours per building X 30 buildings) 600 hours, then run the technology through the instant design… and 6000 hours of environment art design would be completed in 600 hours. This base tech could then be applied to other games outside of Warner Bros, including if there was a multiverse Spider game for PlayStation or multiple planets in Halo. Like I had mentioned in a previous blog, as games expand and the cost to produce the mass levels of these games does not get added into value of the budget in regards to additional staff, the tools designer or chief visual officer, that can write the technology to procedurally generate the large amount of quantity of objects needed to complete the level will become the most important person in the pipeline.