Hasta La Motion!

Introduction – 8 / 10 

A normal match of Titanfall is going to include at least two “Did you see that?!” moments. Like, two separate times where you literally say, “Did you see that?” Out loud. It might be when you dash through a ruined building, jump kicking half a dozen AI-controlled grunts to death. It might be when you pounce from rooftop to rooftop and barely make the leap to the evac ship as enemies trydesperately to take you down. Or it might be when you eject from your doomed titan in the heat of a battle and watch from the sky as its nuclear core explodes, taking out every foe within a block. But no matter your skill level, and no matter how badly you’re winning or losing, you’re still going to feel the urge to scream, “Did you see that!?” because Titanfall–despite a few shortcomings–is a game that demands to be seen.

Titanfall’s features provide plenty of strategic options, but its manageable scope means that you always have the opportunity to use them. This is what the latter Battlefield games got wrong. It’s great to offer the player interesting objectives, vehicles or weapons, but they mean less if that player spends their time queuing, respawning or running to get to the next firefight. Titanfall never wastes your time. You always have the option to go and do something more exciting, to play better, or to try to generate another of the ‘you had to be there’ stories that the game excels at.

You’ll be amazed by how much is going on at any given time on the screen. You’re not battling in the streets of empty cities, you’re fighting alongside AI soldiers, piloting massive mechs, and shooting at enemy players that can tumble through windows and run up walls.

Gameplay – 7 / 10

Matches are limited to 12 players split into two teams, and this restricted headcount is the foundation for all of Titanfall’s other successes. Lower numbers enable the game to incorporate immediate respawns without upsetting its competitive balance, and an intelligent dynamic spawn system means that when you die you pop back near-instantly a short distance from the next big fight. The game ensures that you are doing something exciting for the entire duration of each ten- to fifteen-minute match.

You might think playing on foot plays second-fiddle to piloting a Titan, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Sprinting up a wall and jumping through a window to surprise an enemy position never gets old. Chaining wall-runs and jumps to reach higher ground is a thrill in itself.

The speed and fluidity of movement even changes the whole flow of the gameplay. You’re rarely more than thirty seconds from the action, and it’s quite hard for all but the most skilled snipers to get a bead on a moving pilot.

Graphics – 9 / 10 

Visually, Titanfall is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Its Source Engine graphics max out on lovely HDR lighting and crisp detail, not to mention big explosions and particle effects. However, if you look closely, you’ll notice how the vegetation barely moves, and how the ongoing signs of destruction are very limited.

Play modes could also be more imaginative. Attrition and Hardpoint are classic Team Deathmatch and Control Point modes, while Last Titan Standing and the new Pilot Hunt and Capture the Flag modes are also variants on well-worn themes.

Like so much of Titanfall, the player count seems perfectly balanced. With all the grunts, spectres, pilots and titans on the field, you’re never left looking for team-mates to support or enemies to shoot.

Replayability – 8 / 10

Titanfall might not look or always seem that revolutionary, but it is a transformative online FPS in its own special way. We’ve never seen an FPS that combines two scales of action so successfully, nor one with such speed and fluidity of movement.

Everything from the weapons to the abilities to the maps to the Titans themselves is perfectly balanced. It’s tighter than the strings in a concert grand piano, and just as beautiful to play.

My verdict is ‘PLAY’ (in general I will rate the game ultimately as PLAY / SLAY)

Alex D’souza signing off

MAXIMUM GAMING

For many years, Indian VFX units catered mainly to Hollywood and ad-film makers in India, with feature film directors – barring a few exceptions – keeping their distance. Suddenly, attitudes have changed and it’s certainly encouraging.

One of the few VFX studios, which has attempted to do its bit in pushing the envelope in delivering some really groundbreaking work consistently in the past few years, is FutureWorks (FWX).

AnimationXpress.com’s Sidharth Iyer caught up with the FutureWorks Team on its recent collaboration with A.R. Murugadoss’s second Bollywood directorial ‘Holiday’ and also took a closer look at how did the studio manage this project in greater detail.

“The visual effects industry in India roughly picked up around 1997 and since then it has grown from strength to strength; earlier VFX was an underutilised tool, as in just a few song sequences or commercials were done using VFX but things have really changed in the last decade. Nowadays VFX has become a very integral part of the storytelling process and that’s something heartening to see for the industry,” expounds FutureWorks VFX director Krishnakanth Mishra, on how the VFX industry has done in the recent past.

FutureWorks has four facilities across Mumbai and Chennai providing end-to-end services including visual effects, color and sound services. The studio boasts a 140 visual effects artists’ strong team working together on projects between the two cities.

‘Holiday’ing with A.R. Murugadoss

“Actually our association with A.R. Murugadoss goes back to Thuppakki (2012), as you know that ‘Holiday’ is a refreshed version of that film, thus Murugadoss was comfortable working with us again on this project,” Mishra adds.

FWX delivered upwards of 750 shots for ‘Holiday’ with artists from both the Chennai and Mumbai facility working on the project.

Blending artistry with technology on ‘Holiday’

Speaking exclusively to AnimationXpress.com, the VFX supervisor on ‘Holiday’ Vinay Singh Chuphal says: “Working on the film was a real pleasure as we had earlier collaborated on the Tamil film ‘Thuppakki’ with Murugadoss and working on ‘Holiday’ was a natural progression for him.”

The major VFX sequences that needed the studio’s expertise were the bus, mall and ship blast sequences. “We worked for nearly one and a half months on the project and ensured that everything was according to the director’s vision. The bus blast sequence took some time because we used live footage as well as a lot of CGI to change the backdrop and make it fit the storyline of the film,” he adds.

The other sequences, that required some work was the mall blast sequence and the climax of the film where there are loads of blasts on a ship. A lot of time was spent in researching to get the blasts right; “We shot a real ship from all sides and then recreated it using CGI and ensured that it looked and seemed as realistic as the real one, once you watch the film you will get to see what I mean,” Chuphal explains.

“There were no major hurdles in the execution of the VFX shots, and ‘Holiday’ is a product that FutureWorks is really proud to be associated with,” he ends.

Director’s Cut

Post its release on 6 June with a near 3,500 screen nationwide release the Akshay Kumar starrer has gone onto win the hearts of the critics and audiences alike, and already netted nearly over Rs 60 crore in net collections.

“I am really happy with the work of FutureWorks for my movie Holiday, the way they work is systematic and the way they’ve put their hard work to meet the director’s vision is really fantastic and no matter how many times I have asked for things to be reworked, they are always ready for the betterment of the product. The major VFX works of my film such as the bus blast, mall blast & ship blast have been appreciated by all,” A.R. Murugadoss, director of Holiday exults.

“The ship blast is really fantastic. I’ve received a lot of appreciation calls regarding the blasts VFX and the title animation too. Thanks to the entire FWX team for their commitment and hard work, especially the supervisors, Vinay and Shashi, who are really good at their work,” he ends.

Sharing his views on the collaboration between FWX and A.R. Murugadoss, FWX MD Gaurav Gupta says: “Holiday was a big platform to showcase our creative abilities. I was concentrating on the technology front, keeping up with the software and hardware, so that the boys in the studio could have their creative juices flowing to come up with stunning shots. I am proud of the whole team.”

“All this would not have been possible without the opportunity provided by the producer Vipul Shah and the director A.R. Murugadoss. And I appreciate their trust and faith in my team and me from the bottom of my heart and sincerely congratulate both of them for the success of the film,” Gupta ends.

I’m always fascinated by the opportunity for animation to work its way out of the standard realm of broadcast and into other avenues of consumption. The New York Times’ expansion of video and animated content is one that I find particularly interesting. In the case of the Modern Love series, you have three artists’ interpretation of the same story all on the same page living together. You have the author’s column, the illustrator’s rendition and now, in recent months, the animator’s storytelling.

When I heard that NYC-based designer/animator Freddy Arenas would be doing the June edition of the Modern Love animation, I immediately knew it would be spectacular. To put it simply, Freddy did not disappoint. His work is beautiful and thoughtful, creating a truly timeless narrative that showcases not only excellent design and animation but also storytelling.

Having worked on the Modern Love series, I wanted to follow up with Freddy to see how his experience was and what he thought about the process.

Q&A with Freddy Arenas

First, congratulations! I had spoken with you while you were working on the piece and understand firsthand how ambitious this project can be to take on by yourself. Now that everything is finished, how do you feel about the experience?

Well thanks, it was really interesting to find out what I’m capable of achieving in this short amount of time. I’ve been trying to add a more narrative sense to my motion graphic pieces for a while now, but creating this really let me experiment with character development, storytelling, rhetorical figures, etc. Looking back now I’m really happy with the project.

Four weeks is not much time. Moving forward, do you think this experience will alter how you look at what can be done on other projects and timelines?

I always try to get one step further with my projects, learn something new and make it a little better. So of course for this one I envision maybe something that was out of the scope of what can be done in this amount of time by one person only.

So one thing I learned for sure is to be aware of my boundaries, a good percentage of the shots are the first version, when on most of my projects I might get up to nine or ten versions.

I really brushed up my project management skills too. Working shot by shot without losing sight of the whole project was challenging to say the least.

You have a great command of the medium and it shows in your work. In the Times piece, you combine the subtlety of traditional animation with the sense of scale and space you generally see with more 3D-centric projects. Could you elaborate a bit on your process? When you are working on more traditionally based projects do you find you are doing a good amount of pre-viz in 3D, or have you been diving more heavily right into frame by frame?

In most of my projects, and particularly in the Times piece, I start by analyzing the content, coming up with the ideas and creating a storyboard that will tell the story from beginning to end. With storyboard in hand, I’ll look at each shot, transition, and illustration individually to figure out which would be the technique that best fits my vision for the animation of that shot.

Sometimes it’s faster for me to have a 3D reference when there is heavy camera movement or scene rotations, some I just want the animation to be really fluid and expressive and I’ll do it straight up from my frame by frame drawings.

I also do a lot of secondary animation with After Effects or Cinema, mostly particles and background elements.

One thing that struck me about your piece was that it felt immensely personal. The tree scene in particular was very touching. Do you care to elaborate?

One thing that is really interesting to me is the use of rhetorical figures to create a more abstract or poetic result in my illustrations and animations. I thought humanizing the trees would make it simpler for viewers to relate to the emotions even if they haven’t being in that particular situation, just because somehow they are familiar with trees.

I think animation is an awesome tool to communicate emotions. When I was animating that shot I wanted people to feel her embracing him at first and at the same time I wanted to show how heavy the burden could be, to carry these big branches while being so fragile.

It seems like you have been going in a direction of doing more regular direct-to-client projects. What is next for you and do you have anything exciting on the horizon you would like to talk about?

Yes, lately I’ve been focusing on finding my directorial view. I’m very lucky to work with such talented people who are a big inspiration for me. I always look forward to working with them but every now and then I step out and try to get a couple of projects by myself to see if I can apply what I’ve learned from them.

I think it’s important to also keep ongoing personal projects. I have a tumblr site where I post quick animation and illustration exercises as well as a personal short film I’m trying to finally get done this summer. Hopefully I’ll get to share that with you soon!
__

If you would like to view more of Freddy’s excellent work please visit his website and if you would like to read the Modern Love article in full please visit this link.

For those who want to animate for The New York Times Modern Love video series, send your reels and some complete examples of your work to: animatemodernlove@nytimes.com.

A bumblebee fighting for its life in a spiders web is seemingly rescued by another bumblebee, which stings the spider. Filmed in my flat in east London. Did the second bee save the first on purpose? Or was it just coincidence that 2 bees landed in the same web in a matter of minutes?

This video is being managed exclusively by Newsflare. To use this video for broadcast or in a commercial player go to: http://www.newsflare.com/video/16516/other/bumblebee-in-spiders-web-rescued-by-other-bumblebee or email: newsdesk@newsflare.com or call: +44 (0) 8432 895 191