Christmas Holidays!

Well its been a hell of a starting few months, but now christmas ^^; Now despite presents and festivities there is still work to be done! mainly just tidying up Mels work and Chris Powerpoint; plus getting the plans done for mark and robs; which i should get done over this 1st week before the 25th (i hope :S) if not i have another week or so ^^ Have a merry christmas everyone :D

On a side note: a couple of things have struck me, mainly that i need to get more creative work of my own done, and i would like to point out something for myself and others at college: a website from the head artists at blizzards full of their best work and creativity. a great source for inspiration, and my new blog background as you may have noticed ^^ I will try do more things creatively and try to draw or photoshop at least once a day or a few times a week.

Heres the site for those interested, i would recommend a look around either way:

http://www.sonsofthestorm.com/index.html

2 weekly review, 7th of december

So from last week, again - because of computer issues, not much work was done was home, and college was closed most of the week due to weather conditions. However getting work done in lessons itself is proving troublesome, due to the amount of dispruption, so i will have to find a way to catch up again at home, weither its trying to use another machine or going to a library or whatever. however here is the review for current work:
---------------------------------------------
frist: Chris's Unit 66

  slides still to complete:
  - Animation
 - Architectural walkthough
 - Games
 - Film
+ any i get the time to work on.
with less time to work with in college i will inevitable have to continue out of lessons.
---------------------------------------------
 then breaking those down further on each slide:
- Talk about fundamentals of each
- Give Examples
- Advantages and Disadvantages

But start with a basic slide, and again improve once i get the basics done.
---------------------------------------------
---Mels Unit 78---
-Mels powerpoint: 6  images or so left: moblie application buttons Unit 2: games review and some of my "favourites"

magazine: name, issue, date, publisher.
Outline/summarise, review
(have magazine at home, can do on paper quiet easily)

---Mark---
"planning the plan" work, i will work through the word doc as best as i can and hopefully tommorow get more information about it from mark and see were im starting at.

--- Rob ---
Task 2, all of this needs doing, i have some ideas; and by the end of this week should have come up with one and began to focus on it and get through the powerpoint / checklist

New Feature: weekly/ 2 weekly review

Because of various issues and some problems at home... (damn you £1000 PC for blowing up on me... again.. and again...) i will be using this blog each week or 2 weeks (depending on work load) to update my progress on how: my work is going, how much is still outstanding, how much i need to do within a certain time limit; basically like a diary/plan of sorts.
frist: Chris's Unit 66
To break it down:
 5 slides to start with:
 - CAD
 - Animation
 - Architectural walkthough
 - Games
 - Film
---------------------------------------------
 then breaking those down further on each slide:
- Talk about fundamentals of each
- Give Examples
- Advantages and Disadvantages
---------------------------------------------
Then i have a plan on when to do each slide, Chris mapped it out so i wouldnt have to do much/any at home if i get the work done:

This week: i can get the CAD slide done, 2 hours today and 1 hour tommorow (this timeframe keeps for Chris's lessons).
 1st december: Animation
 8th: Architectural walkthrough
 15th: Games + Film

---Mels Unit 78---
-Mels powerpoint: 8 images or so left: moblie application buttons and some genre related buttons.

Unit 2: games review
magazine: name, issue, date, publisher.
Outline/summarise, review

---Mark---
Up-to-date (i.e. just done the history of animation)

--- Rob ---
Up-to-date

So over the next month or so I will use this to keep on top of work.

3-D welding and a quick update

Ok first thing, today in 3-D max we learnt to "instance copy" (this involves copying an object; then any changes you make to the copy, affect the original model) and welding, this involves getting two objects close to each other, higlighting the vertexes along an area, then welding them together to make a single shape/model. Below is the ship i made doing this (so its perfectly symmetrical). Enjoy:

Also an update : i am working on three projects/powerpoints/essay type work, will take a while and im not sure how i can get powerpoints on this blog or if its easy to get a whole word doc on here. Ill try get some on here otherwise, keep you posted.

Desktop Project

*** ***

I thought it would be a good idea to link all my pages for the project on this one page so they would be easy to find:

Collage
http://wolfsaiyan.blogspot.com/2010/09/u19-desktop-genre-collage.html

Mindmap
http://wolfsaiyan.blogspot.com/2010/09/mels-work-desktop-project-mindmap.html

Desktop Designs
http://wolfsaiyan.blogspot.com/2010/10/uploads-finally-working-design-for.html

Exploring Fonts image:

Final Design
http://wolfsaiyan.blogspot.com/2010/10/desktop-final-image-and-review.html

Evaluation
http://wolfsaiyan.blogspot.com/2010/11/evaluation-of-final-desktop-design.html

Evaluation of Final Desktop design

Now I have uploaded my final desktop design and updated it with my own thoughts and some feedback from class mates, this blogspot is an evaluation of my work with several question I have to answer:

***All of my work for this project is accross my blog along with my own paragraphed evaluation*** 

*Does the end product match your original intentions?

    My final product looks very similar to my original design (See images below). It looks nearly exactly the same as my sketch with some minor changes to make it look better; i.e. proportions, shapes and fonts. 

  *Is the end product appropriate for your intended audience?

       Since I was going for such a large audience to begin with (this desktop could be viewed by a wide range of ages) it had to be clean, nothing explit; all appropriate content, which i achieved. There are Sci-Fi and fantasy elements nothing that could offend someone. However some "older" viewers may not appriciate some of the fonts or the Image of the "warrior" to the right.

*Discuss the technical aspects of your work and highlight the strengths / areas to develop

    I have not used photoshop often, I don't know much of the skills, however I think I have made very good use of layers (theres about 20 or so in there separating all my different objects and colours) Also on my character i think i have made basic use of shading, i have used the pen tool, magic wand tool and FX effects such as dropping shadows and beveling my image. The only equiptment i used was the camera to take the picture of my final sketch.

 

*Discuss the content / style of your work

    The overall style is mainly Sci-fi, although the warrior looks more fantasy than "spacey" but with the time limit it works well enough. I found a decent substitute for stars with a brush i found, giving an "aura" or lighting like effect, again could have done more with it. however the final design has stuck with the research and content. e.g. the 2 images below: one is an "aura"/shape and the other is off a character on the right, just some of my inspiration:

*Did you encounter any problems when creating the product? if so how were they resolved?

    One major problem i found was that because I hadnt outlined my final sketch photoshop was having trouble picking up the image; so Mel showed me a way to "push out" or "bolden" the lines in the picture using a setting in photoshop (that neither of us cannot remember, i will experiement to find it).

*What have you learnt from this experience?

    The main thing i have learnt is that photoshop has so much more to offer and it is going to take me a while to learn how to even find most of it; however this project feels like a start.

*What skills have been developed throughtout this process?

    Increased my photoshop skills slightly, and also it has made me take a more serious look on my sketching and concept, which i will now work on.

*Did you meet the deadline?

    Yes, however i think i could have spent longer on it now, rather than panicing. 

*Did you have any problems with time management?

    No i was ahead of the deadline most of the time, i should have left more time to work though.

*If you had the opportunity to make this product again would do anything different? And are you jappy with overall product?

   I would take more time to learn the tools and create a much less clattered concept. Look at more tutorials and examples to help me.

Some Weekend news and experiences, its relevant

as the title says this post is relevant to my course.

First of this weekend i am watching Blizzcon (huge 2 day event for all blizzard games: WoW, Starcraft and diablo) and there are alot of panels / QnA about how they make their trailers, models, art, etc; really interesting stuff (will try out the starcraft 2 editor myself at some point). Lots of great stuff coming out here

Second After seeing this video:

(fanart of a League of legends character) done in photoshop in (apparently) 1hour and 20mins! I can see how simply skills have been utilised and are put to absolutly amazing use; i will at some point make a profile on deviant art and try do more work myself, (once i buy photoshop again -_- damn these errors...).

Thats all for now folks, i will be updating over the halfterm with any little tutorials i get, work i have enjoyed looking at and the history of animation work i ahve to put up on here.

3-D animation Basic

So from the text and textures we come to animation! To use animation in Max i use the "auto key" to input actions along a timeline, that i could then play as a video; So i added in a couple of object and used the "name" i made earlier. So here is the video of the animation i made, later i will be designing my own: enjoy:

I would also add the second animation i created in the afternoon... however, it didnt go very well and this one does a better job ^^

3-D Max, text and fonts

In 3-D max today we wrote our name!, theres a tab in the objects bar that lets you make Splines, (2-D objects in 3-d space), from this we created 2-D text, then turned it into an editable mesh; giving it polygons. From there we extruded the shape, making them 3-D. After that we messed around with the settings in "materials" (like i did with my car) and used a new option in there "difuse" it lets us put a texture on the objects. Below is a screenshot from max and 7 different textures i made (my favourite is the 6th down, has a lava type of effect ;). Enjoy:

Desktop: FINAL image and review

So after 6 weeks of work, planning, design and photoshop work here is my finished project, the final product. In photoshop i made use of alot of new skills and tools, magic wand (tolerance settings), the pen tool, inserting my own fonts, and ***insert what mel did here*** (something that outlined my picture of my drawn design) that really helped me outline my character on the desktop. here is the final piece (all pieces of design are in earlier blogspots, each with there own descrition etc) Enjoy:

 

I am quite happy with my final desktop:

There is plenty of room for the icons, it has the shipley college logo, the words Media Suite; some rules for the college (single words) and it has turned out very close to my design. The "guardians" colours i did well, adding darker brushes, adding shade etc. The glow on the centre affecting the guardian and asteroids worked better than expected. Now comes the bad news: I think it looks abit too colourful, some of the "rules" are not too readable, some of the words dont fit into the "sci-fi" style (however they were meant to stand out). 

   The "guardian" aswell does look abit garish compared to how i designed it, abit too bright and not spacey. I couldnt get the star-like background either, and the asteroids look abit rushed.

All in all however, i am happy with my desktop and really enjoyed doing it ^^

*** Review/Feedback from Group***

Many  said how some of the colouring  with the 6 points is too dark, so as you can see in the image above (e.g. with misconduct, used to be black) i have made changes accordingly, few other issues came up; as i said i can do better and have plenty of time now to learn more about photoshop, as i am only scratching the surface.

*** UPDATE*** i acidently saved over my final design with the upgrades, however as i said the only major changes were font colours. 

My Car Design

***NOTE*** Car is still unfinished, this blog post is just to save the space ^^

Well here is my "car"... well battle tank kinda thingy (inspiration is that it is "mordekaisers" vechile -see link for 3_D models and league of legends earlier in blog- so dark colours and "spiky") i made use of all we have learnt so far in max, basic primitives, editing the meshes, copying objects changing the sizes, and the new things we learnt, more box modeling techniques and adding textures. Enjoy

As entertaining as my vechile is, there are tens of thousands of 3-D cars out there, in games and animations. Below are just a couple of proffesional examples from games like: "Gran Turismo 5" and "Forza Motorsport 3" of course my "car" is alot more fantasy-like, however this is how proffesionals make em, enjoy

http://www.clutchd.com/wp-content/gallery/08_october_2009-forza-motorsport/forza-motorsport-3-9.jpg

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/862/862827/gran-turismo-5-prologue-20080328045650641_640w.jpg

As you can see, these are smooth, clean, shiny, realistic/life-like. Great examples of how great vechiles in games can look.

3-D Max Car tutorial

Today, Chris showed us how to use box modeling to make a "simple" car, using just a basic box and some cylinders; which we made into editable meshes and played around with for an 1:30 hour or so; really fun and learning alot more about 3-D Max. We also started using "materials" to add colours to our model, and create multiple colours at once edit them, etc. Below is an image of my... car?... batmobile? i don't know... enjoy...

Will be designing and making my own later today, look forward to it ^^

Robs homework: understanding web animation technology 1:

Here i will be posting 5 different types of web animation, what they are; a definition and an example/screenshot.

1. Banner Ads
"A graphical web advertising unit, typically measuring 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels tall (i.e. 468x60)."
http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/banner_ad/

On just about every website you'll see these things, flashing away or promting you to shoot five ducks to win a prize; they still occasionaly get you to click away at them, even if its just for a joke; it is a very affective form of advertisment and often very simple flash animation or game.

Here are a few screenshots:

2. Animated Inferface Elements:

"Animated Inferface elements" are on just about every website you will come accross, they can be as simple as changing an icon or buttons colour, make a drop down menu (as seen below); or can be more complex depending on the website, i think the majority of sites would be pretty dull if all you did was press buttons that did nothing... these simple Animated elements of websites largely go unnoitcied however, websites would be terrible without them

3 Linear and Interactive Animation:

Linear animation, is an animation that is always the same, no matter what you do, it simply repeats as you watch it; e.g. most flash videos (such as the "awesome series on youtube")

Interactive Animation, is animation, that yes, "interacts" with you (e.g. the samorost puzzles) you can control some aspect of the animation bascially.


4. Promtion, instruction and information:

Promotion:
We have already seen an example of how flash animation is used for promotion with the banner ads (see top of this post), "pop ups" are another example of how they are used for promotion; these are shapes, words etc that can sometimes cover your entire page, again annoying but effective advertisement.

Information:
Websites have various ways the relay information using animation; one example i found was on the Cadburys website (although it has changed since) it used to have a full section for learning abotu the site through an interactive walkthrough of the a cadburys factory with information popping up each time you "explored" a section; several sites have also adopted a similar method (e.g. npower have a similar section in there site)

Instruction:
Lots of websites use flash as instructions; using an interactive medium often makes learning new information easier, and often more bearable and interesting than reading so many walls of text. One good example I found was a "how to play" on the Warcraft trading card game website (now moved) it looked like a flash game that gave you a rundown of the games basics. methods like this are much more interesting than, like i said, numerous amounts of text.

PSD: Logos Research

In our last PSD lesson the class looked a logos involving "equality and diversity" and each took the same logo off the internet and used photoshop and its various tools (e.g. a new one for me was the "pen" tool, was very useful and let me essencially copy the image as my own). everyone in the class then edited the image individually to give it a different look: below are the orginal image and my own inturpritation:

***
Have to upload my own images later, forgot to save a jpeg file :S

***

There are thousands of popular logos worldwide, use in all the worlds industires (see large image below)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/60/172320206_6afd460270.jpg


















However since this is a games development course, i'm will upload examples of 2 of the more popular logos in gaming; explain why they are good/bad and show an image for each.

1.EA
http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownload.com/media/2009/08/ea_logos_landscape_smalljuly7.jpg

Despite all the bad things about EA, it has to be said they are one of the biggest and well known gaming publishers (3rd party) around, they started off with a simple black and grey logo (black background, silver "EA") which is easily recognizable, but one of the best things about EA and there logo (as you can seee in the image below) they have adapted it to numerous titles and audiences, each with its own design and colours ranging across the gaming market, the same design simple altered each time.

2. Xbox 360 logo
http://www.electricsistahood.com/images/ever/xbox360_logo.jpg

One of the "big three" in the gaming industry today, microsoft has incorperated a simple, but effective logo that is a simple sphere, coloured green and silver, and althought it at first seems pretty simple, the colours and the "shine" are memorable and recognizable and out of the "big 3" (microsoft, nintendo and sony) i think microsoft has made the best logo, nintendos is just the word nintendo coloured red with a border, and sonys playstation network logo is a sphere with the four controller buttons overlaying it (in a graffiti like style) it is much betetr than nintendos but feels less attractive to the eye than microsofts i think (but thats just my opinion)

***UPDATE***

Over the weekend (due to some problems with the blog in college... no idea :S should be fixed at home) i will be uploading several pieces of work: Some of mels work invovling my final design (if i finish it up over the weekend), Robs work (listed in planner) which involves finding examples of various online animation (e.g. banners) and finally for PSD lessons, i have to find some well known logos and say why they are good/bad or popular, or well done, etc.

More will be updated over the weekend.

Rob Flash work... BUTTONS!

In robs lesson this week we learnt more about rollover buttons, (these are used all over the web and in games i have examples in one of my eariler posts, the below images are all done by me)

so this first set of images is the 1st, one i made, very basic, playing around with the effects and shadows and (in this case) failing to make the button work the way i wanted (i.e. when you move the cursor over it, it should look like your pressing it in, however i messed up with the shadows and it doesnt look right). so here are my basic buttons:

so it really doesnt look like its been pressed in, more like the shadow has made a jump forward...
moving on:

the image below is off the second button i made, using more methods, brushes, layers, effects and colouring to give it an effect. The task was to get an image of a favourite character of ours (yes i know i have two... but it works and i like it ;) and put it on the button with an interesting/attracive background, and then add the rollover effect (i.e. so it looks like its a button when pushed).
here is the image i will comment below:

Now the 1st most noteable thing is that unlike the first button where the shadow moved, this button looks like its actually been pressed down as the shadow remains (just about) the same. For the colours i used one of the custom brushes in photoshop and layered it, giving the very misty blue effect. I also made the two characters (Ike from fire emblem radiant dawn and date masamune from the sengoku basara series) black and white so they dont contrast with the background colour and fit in nicely. As i said this was all done in layers, so i then added a very low opacity white to add the 3-D shiny effect to the top. also if you look closly there is a grid along most of the image (rubbed out in some places to not cover the characters) which i did on a separate page of photoshop, (very small page) and then made into a pattern and made it an overlay for this image.
i really enjoyed doing it and am very pleased with the results, and i think it looks very good (maybe not as good as some of the creative button I linked in my older post however for my first attempt i'm happy)

please comment and feedback :)

Uploads finally working, Design for desktops upload

Finally the uploads appaer to work at home again; now, below is a picture of my 4 designs and descriptions for a desktop. I will go into detail into each after the image but bear in mind each image must:
-Have the shipley college logo
-have plenty of room for around 22 desktop icons
-contain the works "media suite"
-contain the "rules" we think in college are the most important somewhere written on the desktop

***NOTE: i realise the quality is not great so i will give a full description of what each design is and says below, also the inspirational images for my design were printed on both sides of 2 pieces of A4, i will try to upload at some point in the future***

Idea 1 (top left):
"The idea was a dark background, with a smokey/whispy effect in front of it. coming down the middle a very bright/light sword (to contrast with the darker background) it will also attract the viewers attention, a camera will be atop the sword and the words "media suite" will be written on the hilt; the shipley college logo will be on the camera. There is plenty of space for icons, and the rules/points will be written along the whisps of smoke

Idea 2 (top right):
"The idea is a hand holding up the shiply college logo (which is "melting" through the fingers like sand) "media suite" is wrriten on the arm holding the logo, it will have a light background (bringing the viewers attention to the logo and icons) leaving plenty of room for icons and rules."

Idea 3 (bottom left):
Large drawing of the college ominously looming next to the character walking past, with the college logo near the top of the desktop (looking almost like a film title) there wont be as much room for rules or icons than the other ideas however the visual aspect may appear more impressive and be harder to achieve.

Idea 4 (bottom right)
This idea is very mystic and spacey, (combined a variety of inspirational desktops i found) it would have a very dark/space blue background, littered with stars, with a large looming "planet" filling most of the background, with lighting shining through behind it, and the words "media suite" being on the top of it and the rules coming down it. there will also be a constalation of stars that look like some kind of warrior/guardian/protector whose shield bears the logo of shipley college. i really like this idea, and it may actually be easier than the other three, depends on the "star guardian"


So those are my suggestions, any feedback would be appreciated or if anyone has a favourite and why :)

***NOTE, i will only be comparing my finished final design with proffesional work, otherwise i won't really know what to compare each individual image too.***

3-D Max my own structure design

So here are my designs for our building design. using ideas from japanese, modern and spacey/futuristic architecture, as you can see from my intial diagram i have combined the 3 to make some kind of futuristic japanese battle space station. i have labled how i am going to assemble each section in 3-D max, and how i am going to edit/modify it.

so here, within 45 minutes i was to construct my design in 3-D studio max. I really enjoyed doing this however it did take awhile to incoorperate all the tools we had learnt to use in the previous hours, and although there are many thing i didnt manage to achieve (such as the correct shape for the towers, the cylinders going around the station etc) it looks similar to my design and in 45minutes of work i am quite pleased with it. I look forward to being able to do more with the software soon enough; below the image of my work however is a comparision with some "proffesional" 3-D structure model

As you can see the model is simple but well designed, of course it has textures (etc) and it doesnt really resemble mine (you cant find many 3-Dmodels of japanese battle stations...) it is a good example for modeling done very well and simply on 3-D Max. (please note there are many more impressive 3-D models across the web, however this is one of the few i could find actually done and described in 3-D max ^^

3-D Max - my first castle

Today we learrnt to add an editable mesh to our box, allow us to edit the Vertex's, Faces, edges and polygons of our shape. We then Created a modifery for the battlements and walls (Taper) to play around with the shape, we were then tasked with creating our own front wall/gate :) (quickly) below is an image of my castle enjoy.

 I really enjoyed using the software, and i can see how it is used to create proffesional models and characters and i really look forward to learning more, i will be uploading a castle we design in the future, i will compare it to this first one aswell. 

Mels work, desktop project mindmap

After looking at some examples from work in previous years, I signed up to "mindmeister" online, (mind mind making website, free). I set up several categories and added some images and detail to each, its not as complex as some as the ones from last year and i missed out a couple of things (such as font style), however i am happy with it and it has given me a few ideas ^^ below is the image (exported from the program)

***NOTE the image is not the newest and doesnt contain the changes mentioned below as of yet***

*UPDATE*
Added section about font, Various needed items (media suite words etc), and added a few more bits to the other sections ^^

Animation homework: Examples of Rollover buttons

In class we learnt how to make simple "rollover" buttons in Flash, bascially, if you move your mouse over one of these it changes, this can be colour, image, animation etc etc. Here are some examples i have found: (i have tried to link some, however it doesnt seem to work, so i will link the pages that use them ^^)

http://www.quackit.com/web_design/rollover_images.cfm

http://www.crawforddirect.com/roll.htm

another example (which I completely didn't think of screenshotting at the time) on my email, was an advertisment about university which showed a large pile of book about uni, if you moused over them, they would fall to the group in a pile and show text would show up :)

Stop motion homework

Stop motion definitions:
1. Persistence of Vision (explanation found at: http://animation.about.com/od/glossaryofterms/g/pervision_def.htm)
       "Persistence of Vision" refers to the phenomenon where the retina retains an image for a brief split-second after the image was actually seen, and lends itself to animation by fostering the illusion of motion when we view images in closely-timed sequence to one another. We don't notice the fractional skips between images because that persistence fills in the momentary gap to make the motion seem seamless.


2. Frame Rates (information found at: http://www.fastvideoindexer.com/knowledgebase/framerate.html)

      The frame-rate says how many images of a movie are displayed every second a movie is played. The higher frame rate a movie has the smoother objects move in the movie. You measure frame rate in frames per seconds (fps). Frame rate in game is the same thing. The only difference between movie frames and game frames are that movie frames are created as you play for a movie they are just recreated from a file.
      Frame rate is one of the factors affecting movie file size and quality. The update can be interlaced or non interlaced, progressive.

3-D first made character from my concept

Below are images of my own made character in 3-D studio max, we were giving an hour learning more of the tools and shapes, another hour then to come up with the concept for a character, and then using only Standard and Extended primitives create our character in 45 minutes, here is my spear wielding kitteh!

 I had fun creating my model, rushed a little bit and i didnt have time to add extra shapes for much detail but overall im fairly happy with the result for my first attempt at a real model.

3-D Studio Max - My first robot :D

This image, is of 3-D studio Max; you can see the 4 screens we use in this program for the 3-D modelling, We have used various shapes to create a simple robot, clone, manipulate, re-shape (etc), and then personalise it (i.e. my has spiky hair and is waving!)

enjoy :D

U19 - Desktop Genre Collage

Below is a picture of my "gaming genre collage" containing cut out froms the following genres: War, Sci-Fi, Horror and fantasy. all these images were cut out and collected from gaming magazines such as Edge. (i would also compare it to other collages however on the net i can only seem to find ones from other people, fan-made, not genre based, so i can't really compare no-related images)  Each genre has notable features showing which it is:

Sci-Fi: usually set in space, involving ships, aliens and planets

War: usually set in World War settings, or modern conflicts, or even creating conflict, the main feature being, "real" guns and real settings (usually)

Horror: basically a game that makes the player "squirm" weither it messes with you head, or makes you jump, or is just completely crazy, if it makes you scream inside, its horror ;)

Fantasy: (often) a fictional world/setting, usually involving monsters (such as orcs or dragons) swords, magic and often bright, vibrant (and usually unrealistic) characters and story.

In my opinion many of the games and genres mix and blent in various games, (i.e. crysis could be shown as war and Sci-Fi; or dead space is horror and Sci-Fi)

So in war we have games such as counter-strike, metal gear soild etc different types of war games (FPS and stealth) but war nonetheless (anyone who knows games will know that most types of gameplay can be made into each genre, with only some having difficulty).

In the Horror we have: Dead Space, Alone in the dark, Alien and Bioshock
In Sci-Fi:  Crysis, Too human, Fallout 3, Halo 3, Mass effect.
Fantasy: Final fantasy crysis core, heavenly sword, the witcher, soul calibur 4, fire emblem, guild wars, assassins creed, devil may cry 4, ninja gaiden 2, Prince of Persia.

As i said many games make use of several genres, however most seem to have an overarching theme; i.e. Mass Effect is set in a Sci-Fi setting, Counter-Strike is modern war, Alone in the dark is... a man... alone in the dark... scary...   and finally! the witcher is set ina fantasy world with monsters sorcery and the like.

(fantasy being my personal favourite, but i enjoy all forms of genre when its done well :)

3-D models: update

One thing i just found, and a game i cant believe i forgot! league of legends is a free... RPG-like, RTS-like... MMO-like game, its bascially Dota (popular warcraft 3 mod defence of the anicients) made into a real game, whilst the game already has a great style (similar to WoW but unique) they have announced in the coming year some major updates, especially graphics wise; below is an image of my favourite character newly rendered with some of the new things they have got out of their engine, enjoy :)

http://eu.leagueoflegends.com/board/attachment.php?attachmentid=5494&d=1284664508

also, visit
http://www.lol-europe.com/
sign up and play for free! (i need myself a good team "cough" ;) 

3-D models - Favourites etc

3-D is a huge part of gaming today (even though 2-D is hugely popular, and has been done really well in recent years i.e. Blazblue) There are 1000s of 3-D models are made for each game, 1000s of loveable and hateful characters and trash, below are just some of my favourite models, in cinematics or otherwise, why i like them, and there style:

1. Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn cinematic: Ikes model

http://purenintendo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/fire-emblem-radiant-dawn-20071012111931227.jpg

This 3-D cinematic is from a Wii game, so even though the graphical power of the Wii is lack luster compared to its competition, it still delievers very good cinematic models, that are, not hugely detailed but show of character (expression,emotion etc) aswell as ,in this case, getting an anime-like style across

2.  Starcraft 2 Zealot Unit model (in-game)

http://www.starcraft2.com.au/zealot.gif

                                                      One of the many ground units found in starcraft 2, being an RTS unit, although there is detail it isnt lavished in it, as yourcommanding so many from so high, also considering the comparison from different spec PCs, you can have some looking very basis or very details, either way: the unit portrays the protoss race very well, the religious "zealot"/monk type look, golden armour very alien shape wise but with human similarities and to top it off lazer swords, concept art for these is amazing and the model has been depicted very well.

3.  screenshot of Okami (in-game)

http://media.photobucket.com/image/okamiscreenshot/nikuluffy/okami.jpg

                                                                                         Again another Wii game, okami show graphics are not everything and that the Wii can produce a beautiful 3-D game in its own right; okami shows a very colourful and arty style, that is often just simply gorgeous to look at, the character models are detailed, as is the world; beautiful 3-D art

4. World of Warcraft (screenshot and cinematic comparision)

http://i.thottbot.com/ss/s/56469.jpg

http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/game_wallpapers/world_of_warcraft/orc_cinematic_art.jpg

Warcraft is a huge 3-D world,and although not the most graphically impressive it has a good near comic/fantasy style that allows such a huge player base, that (for the most part) love and enjoy this living 3-D world, but it isnt everything Blizzard (the makers) can do, below is an image from the game itself, next to a screenshot of the 3-D cinematic, showing that if they wished, warcraft could pack one hell of a punch in the graphics market, especially on the PC:





5. Dragon Age: origins (in-game screenshot)

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/screenshots/original/2009/02/zoomer1.jpg

Dragon age is a Multiplatform RPG fantasy game, making huge use of many many 3-D models and compared to most games the models faces are especially good and detials (a trait bioware are becoming very good with) most models themselves smooth for the most part (odd error with hair etc, showing nothings perfect in even the biggest of games) and give off a very good sense of each character and race, especially with the models size and proportions (i.e. elves,dwarfs and the other races are recognizeable and iconic)

well thats my list, i hope you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it in this lesson :) although some things in there are opinion, there is fact aswell, leave some comments and tell me what you think ^^