Village Gamer

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Soulstorm, a game developed by Vancouver’s Relic Entertainment has made it to the shortlist vote for a Golden Joystick Award. Nominated in the PC Game of the Year category, if enough Relic fans go and vote, they could bring home the gold. As long-time supporters of Relic Entertainment, we’ve already cast our vote for them –  and we hope that our readers will do the same and support our local developers in gaining this award. Best of luck to everyone over at the Relic studio, and congratulations on your nomination.

[Press Release]

Building An Elephant…

Vancouver, Canada June 15, 2008.

Artifex Studios created a photorealistic 3D elephant for Nissan.The carefree elephant hitching a ride on the back of a Nissan pickup truck was built and animated for Filmmates Productions (Mexico City) and Clemente Camara & Associates  in collaboration with The Oranj Group out of New York City. The spot opens on a beautiful field, warm sunlight and an endless winding road.  The new Nissan product carries a statuesque elephant.  The elephant, moved by the view with the wind in its ears and the fantastic looking vehicle it rides on, slowly lifts its hind legs and opens its arms in a human-like gesture that seems to say “I’m the King of the World”. Although a live elephant was used for parts of the commercial, the realistic movement for the last sequence was completed in full CG utilizing a realistic 3D elephant modeled after the live action animal.

The Plates: Since there was a ‘stand-in’ elephant that needed to be painted out prior to moving forward with 3D, there was a great amount of prep work completed on the plates even before animation took place.  First, the plates needed to be tracked in 3D since both the camera and truck moved throughout each shot. Camera solutions were exported to both Maya and Nuke.  Maya was then used to create projection geometry, which was then exported to Nuke.  In Nuke a combination of stills were painted onto the geometry and the exported camera data from the 3D tracking software was used to create a clean sequence without the stand- in elephant.

The Animation: The elephant model was achieved by creating a base mesh in Maya.  ZBrush was used to create high-resolution detail such as wrinkles and folds.  Existing photos were used as reference and colour maps were created by painting.  With the combination of the colour and displacement map, a photoreal elephant was rendered using HDRI photography for lighting and subsurface scattering to help simulate skin.  In addition, for the elephant’s close-up Maya Fur was utilized for an added touch of realism and detail.  Rendering was achieved through Renderman.

Animating the elephant required a balance of realistic motion and pushing the limitations of an elephant’s actual range of motion to achieve the client’s objective, all the while maintaining a sense of believability. Artifex Studios Ltd. is located in Vancouver, BC and has been creating digital effects and 3D animation for film and television since 1997.

Final Verdict: Addictive

Developer: Codeminion
Demo: 60 minute trial
Platform: PC
Genre: Casual Match 3 Puzzle
Official Game Site: Saqqarah – note, parts are still under development
Price: $19.95 USD instant download 26mb

System Requirements:

OS: Windows Vista/XP/2000/ME/98
CPU: 800 Mhz
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Drive: 45 MB
Graphics: DirectX 8
Sound Card

All Screenshots in this review are the property of and copyright to Codeminion.

Saqqarah is a truly beautiful game – the amount of detail the designers have put into the UI and levels for this game is incredible. Everything about Saqqarah is pleasing to the senses – the soundtrack is very fitting for the setting of the game, and is actually something I could listen to all on its own. The puzzles are challenging without being impossible, and the methodology used to solve them is easy to learn. The characters in the game are helpful and amusing – I love how the little scarab rests against a pillar in between levels. You can even learn little bits about Egypt’s past throughout the game.

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Toronto – Video games are increasingly becoming a part of family activities, according to a new study by Ipsos Reid, and commissioned by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC.) Part of the reason, the survey suggests, is because parents perceive a greater availability of games for their children.

According to the study, 69 per cent of adults agree there is currently a good selection of options available that are well-suited to playing video games as a family.

“Stories about the video game market are often saturated in some of the big, hot-button sales titles like Grand Theft Auto or Halo – great games, but definitely not for families. The truth of the matter is family games represent the bulk of the market, and it’s clear from this survey that parents are seeing that, too,” said Nicole Helsberg, Director of Communications for ESAC.

Data from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the independent body that rates video games, seems to support this. According to the ESRB, 59 per cent of the games rated for sale in North America in 2007 were rated for everyone (E) and another 15 per cent were rated for everyone ten years and older (E10+.)

“And this is the story that needs to be told: video games can be a positive option for family time. Parents are playing with their kids, and embracing gaming as a way to spend time together as a family,” said Helsberg.

Additional findings from the Ipsos Reid survey of Canadian households include:

• Forty per cent of parents say that video games are increasingly becoming a part a family activity in their households.

• Forty-one per cent of parents agree say that they’d prefer their child to play video games than watch television.

• Fifty-seven per cent of parents play video games with their children.

• Among adults aged 18+ who have played video games in the past 4 weeks, the average (mean) age of a Canadian gamer is 40.3 years.

nextMEDIA – The Future of Digital Content wrapped Sunday in Banff, Alberta, concluding two days and three evenings of presentations, keynote addresses, workshops, and networking events. This was the fourth year for the event, which has consistently delivered a ‘look forward’ on issues affecting both the broadcast and digital media sectors.

“nextMEDIA continues to grow alongside the digital media industry,” said Mark Greenspan, Director of Digital Content at Achilles Media. “For the second year in a row, we have staged a sold-out event that has attracted players from across North America in all media sectors.”

This year’s event was all about content with nextMEDIA taking a leadership role with the launch of ‘nextMEDIA Exposed’, a video and blogging channel covering daily events at the three-day conference.

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Come celebrate Vancouver’s emerging centre of innovation in sustainability, arts & culture, and digital media.

Concepts for the future development of GNWC will be on display. Join us for live performances, an exhibition of works by local artists, and fun hands-on activities. Entertainment for the whole family!

Date: Saturday June 21 2008 – 10:00am – 3:00pm
Location: Great Northern Way Campus – 577 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

The Canadian new media industry will gather on November 19th to honour this year’s winners in front of hundreds of their peers, showcasing previous years’ highlights, and focusing on the promising future of the Canadian new media industry.

In the meantime, the list of nominees has been announced, with some 20 digital media content creation and new media technology companies among the honourees. Among this year’s studio nominees are Vancouver’s Next Level Games, Inc. with two nominations, Goodison Design, Kinzin, Vision Critical and Taunt Media of Burnaby. Congratulations also to Masters of Digital Media Executive Director Dr. Gerri Sinclair and Producer Michael Fergusson for their respective nominations in the Educator of the Year and Producer of the Year categories.

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In a statement issued earlier today, the US Attorney’s office in Sacramento, California announced that Greg King has pleaded guilty to two counts of transmitting code to cause damage to a protected computer. As part of the plea agreement Greg King agreed to a two-year US Federal prison sentence. As this is a US Federal case, Greg King will be required to serve the full sentence without parole. Actual sentencing for the case is scheduled to take place on September 3, 2008 at which time the presiding Judge may make additional conditions within the sentence, including court-ordered restitution.

This case arose from Greg King’s continual botnet attacks and hacking attempts against Village Gamer’s parent company, KillaNet Technology Ltd., dating back to early in 2004. The non-profit volunteer-run digital media resource community often withstood DDoS attacks of thousands of megabytes per second, which often resulted in damage to web files and databases or total web server downtime, not to mention lost time in regards to community development and the loss of many hours of family time.

Thanks to their commitment to the case and the hard work of FBI Special Agent Brian Scott and US Attorney Matt Segal, the KillaNet Technology community is very happy to see an end in sight to this ordeal, and will be looking forward to the date of Greg King’s sentencing to US Federal prison.

A copy of the official US State Attorney’s office press release is available here in pdf format.

* Vancouver Film School will be hosting an open house on June 18th for their Film Production Programme:

VFS Film Production Open House
6pm – 8pm at the VFS Café, 390 West Hastings Street (corner of Homer and Hastings)
RSVP to openhouse@vfs.com or 604.631.3591

– See what makes the VFS Film Production program one of the best in the world.
– Meet award-winning Film Production Department Head David Hauka.
– Hear from instructors in Directing, Cinematography, Post Production & Art Design as they discuss their areas of expertise.
– Get the straight goods from students and alumni.
– Watch award-winning student films made at VFS and find out more about all the projects Film Production students tackle.

* This coming weekend, Vancouver Film School will be co-presenting the Screenwriters’ Summit, which will be taking place at the VanCity Theatre in Vancouver. Featured speakers are: Syd Field, Linda Seger, Michael Hauge, and John Truby.

The weekend will include half-day lectures with each speaker, with very little content overlap: the speakers have worked together to build their lectures to complement one another. Major topics include: character goals and desire, character arcs, the nature of conflict, universal themes and symbols, understanding your demographic, key genre conventions, deep structure, and the 7 steps to a great premise. Each half-day will culminate in a Q & A session with the speakers.

Screenwriters Summit
Saturday June 7- Sunday June 8, 2008
8:30am – 6:00pm each day
Vancouver International Film Centre @ Vancity Theatre
1181 Seymour Street
Cost: $425.00 per person – seminar seating capacity: 175

Registration and Further Information

Way back in March of this year, Vancouver Film School announced that they were partnering with YouTube to create a scholarship challenge. YouTubers were given the chance to win one of three full scholarships for whichever VFS programme they wanted to pursue, all they had to do was produce a three minute short film around the subject “What Matters To You”.

The response to the competition was widespread, with hundreds entries coming in from all over the globe. The Vancouver Film School team whittled through the entries, and placed the top ten on the VFS YouTube channel and allowed the public to vote on their favourites.

The top three videos have been announced, and they are:

Jorge R. Canedo Estrada, 17, of Mexico (Digital Design)

Christopher Harrell, 25, of the United States (Digital Design)

Stefan Ramirez Pérez, 19, of Germany (Foundation Visual Art & Design)

You can view the three winning entries right here on VFS’ YouTube channel.