Have you ever heard of the games called Dead or Alive, Gonzo’s Quest or Starburst slot machine? If you are Indian and reading this I doubt you have – but if you’re from, let’s say, the United Kingdom, then you’ve most likely done.

Gonzo’s Quest, Starburst and Book of Dead are three of the most popular 3D slot games on the internet. Nowadays animations are everywhere, most of Bollywood movies produced today which has some type of animations. And it does not necessarily have to be entirely in 3D-animations like Kochadaiiyaan, but just special effects such as car explosions, dancing sequences, etc.

But what is required to make animations for an online slot game – we have compiled a new version of our previous article, the life of a 3D slot animator. 

All you need to know about 3D animations for online slot games:-

To get your career going for animations of slot games you need some kind of relevant experience or minimum a bachelors degree. In India, there are several universities with relevant programs, such as;

• Amity University, Mumbai – BSc- Animation & Visual Graphics
• National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad – Several different programs ranging from Animation Film Design to Graphic Design
• IIFA Multimedia, Srinivasanagar – BSc in Animation & Multimedia

A self-thought designer can stand a chance, but then you need a big portfolio of previous projects which are relevant to creating casino games.

Tasks to expect

As an animator for online slot machines, you can expect to do 3D models, creating animations, poses and sometimes intro animation videos – depending on your companies’ and projects budget. The theme, however, is created by a designer who you are working closely to.

Every slot game has a designer who does not only create the overall theme but also designs the bonus games and the desired emotion an effect of a big win should look like. Even if you are working close to your designer you will have a lot of freedom in the animations you do. The designer will tell you whether the animations should look more goofy or cartoony. But the rest is up to you.

Timeline for a casino game project.

This usually depends on the budget of the slot game and which game studio you work for. Each year there are 100’s of online slots produced over the world with NetEnt, Microgaming and Play ‘n Go being the leaders. 

These game studios can produce up to four to five games each month.  Smaller online casino game developers releases, such as QuickSpin or Nolimit City, can develop one new slot machine per month. Therefore, as a 3D animator, the project timeline is short compared to computer games. Usually, one to three months for each project, if you are not working on an exclusive casino game for an online casino such as LeoVegas. Creating exclusive online slot games means you are developing it side by side with a partner. When you are co-creating projects the partner usually requires several iterations and this can result in a lengthy project.

Scruffy Duck

As an example, LeoVegas developed a casino game called Scruffy Duck and was cooperating with the slot game studio NetEnt. This project took about six months to complete since LeoVegas had several criteria to fulfil. Therefore, NetEnt decided to allocate fewer designers on the project than usually, but who worked for a longer period on the slot game. The result is a slot, where you can quickly tell it’s not up to the normal standards of NetEnt and far from what LeoVegas represent themselves as a brand. One could just imagine NetEnt wanting to take the slot game one way and LeoVegas stubborn, since it was there game, seeing it takes a direction towards something else – in the end, it’s a mix of broken promises, ingenious details, good to half-good features that together create this slot called Scruffy Duck!

Online Casino Games

Online casino games are a new phenomenon in India. Poker and Rummy have grown a lot the past year and slot machines on Facebook. You will see advertisements every day about it. However, many people don’t know how casino games work.

Guide 2 Gambling is a free source of information about playing online casino and the different games available. If you want to know more about this topic, check out their website. 

The post The basics behind designing online casino games appeared first on AnimationXpress.

Avengers: Endgame surely has an “end” in the title, but it’s Spider-Man: Far From Home that will be the finale to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s phase three.

In a recent interview, Kevin Feige revealed that Spider-Man: Far From Home is the conclusive end to phase three because of the way it portrays Tony Stark’s legacy.

He says, “Those were the films that were culminating the entire Infinity Saga of the MCU. And as we were working on Endgame we realized that the true end of the entire Infinity Saga, the final film of Phase three, had to be Spider-Man: Far From Home, because — spoiler — we lose Tony Stark at the end of Endgame. The relationship between Peter Parker and Tony Stark is so special over the five films that Tom Holland has portrayed Spider-Man in the MCU, that we needed to see where his journey went, and see how does Spider-Man step out of the shadow of his mentor, Tony Stark, and become the true hero that he was always meant to be. And it’s for that reason that Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home are essentially two pieces of the same story, and it’s not over yet until Spider-Man: Far From Home.”

Directed by Jon Watts, the movie stars Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson,  Zendaya, Cobie Smulders, and Jake Gyllenhaal. Sony Pictures Entertainment India releases Spider-Man: Far From Home on 4 July 2019 in Hindi, English, Tamil and Telugu.

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“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”- Dr. Suess

Over the past two years, Signify, arguably one of India’s best esports team has had the privilege of participating in various national level tournaments, represented India at multiple International tournaments besides working with some of the finest talents in the Indian esports circuit. With a heavy heart, they’ve announced the team’s dissolution.

As Signify, a product of Horizon Sports India would continue to scale, there would be no immediate solution to prevent the conflict of interests stemming from the ownership structure of Cobx Gaming and Horizon Sports. Therefore, in the best interest of the players and management, the company has decided to dissolve the Signify brand and our accompanying teams effective 1 July, 2019.

In the past two years, Signify, both DOTA-2 and CS: GO teams have time and again proven their skills and won various renowned titles in the esports circuit in India and represented the country in various prominent tournaments internationally. From having rosters belonging to different countries to forming an all Indian team to introducing a brand-new CS: GO team, Signify has come a long way. Unfortunately, as all good things come to an end, their journey too has come to end.

Addressing this decision, Horizon Sports co-founder Rajdip Gupta mentioned, “With the interest of avoiding conflicts arising from the ownership structure of Cobx Gaming and Horizon Sports , we have decided to dissolve the Signify. Two years ago, we formed the team with the intention to promote professional gaming and expanding professional teams in India. Today, the esports ecosystem in India has flourished tremendously and there are multiple professional teams set-up, hence, we believe this is the right time step out and avoid any sort of conflict with Cobx Gaming as we are actively involved in organising tournaments.  We would also like to thank our players for giving the team their all and wish them the best for what lies ahead. As an organisation we will be doing everything we can to help the players secure the next step in their career and find their ground. We are sure with their skills and experience they will achieve great success.”

Before dissolving as a team Signify has thanked all who have showered their support from the early days till today. They said without the support of the media and their patrons, without the people who showed up at their meet and greet, without the loud cheers every time they were up on stage this would not be possible. For them, it’s been a dream which came true.

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Climate change has been evident for sometime now and as recent searches have showed, it’s taking turns for the worse. All of us have seen what adverse effects it can have on the environment and the world we’re living in. For instance – Chennai. Scientists are concerned about even more drastic effects that could befall us in the near future if we don’t start conserving nature immediately. 

Probably this have triggered animation studio Ekabhuya Animation to create animated clip The Warli Revolt that’s inspired from the Warli art of the tribal people living in and around the jungles of the Aarey Colony, Mumbai. The animated piece with spoken word poetry and the lyrics by Prakash Bhoir (tribal leader) and Swadesi Nation (a rap group from Mumbai), voices a protest against cutting down the trees and saving the last surviving Warli tribe in their natural environment. The clip shows how we need to strike a balance and draw a line without disturbing an entire ecosystem of wildlife and human life for the sake of urbanisation. 

Ekabhuya Animation co-founder and producer Shivangi Ranawat said, “The Warli Revolt is an important film in its time. It is a tribute to the dying folk art of Warli and the story of the warli tribes living in and around the forest, their ongoing struggle to save the homes and the forest for the sake of urban development. This film sheds light on the urgency to preserve our natural heritage and cultural legacy.”

Animation as a medium is a strong form of expression that’s gaining momentum with every passing day. The Warli Revolt is more of a personal project for Ekabhuya Animation co-founder and creative head Janmeet Singh.The concept for the film was to represent reality through the visual art form about the tribes inhabiting the area. The animation style for this film is unique and captivating that makes you sit up and think about the concept it portrays. The Warli art is unique and indegenous to the people and still in practice. Inspired by local artisan Dinesh Barap, this short film originates to take the viewer into the tribal lands and the way they see the world.

 Talking about the process of animation and the execution of the film, Ranawat added, “The idea was to keep the style rooted, traditional to bring out an earthy texture to the film. We decided to draw every frame to give justice to the warli traditional art while creating complex interwoven patterns using minimal warli elements. Each character or warli figure was animated separately and then composed in After Effects. Besides After Effects, we worked mostly with Photoshop and Krita. 

The rap is narrated in Marathi and Hindi, and culminated through a lot of research by sitting with Bhoir that included sustainable living, recycling, farming, lifestyle of tribes, communication and interaction with the modern world.”

The team that worked behind this film, Swadesi, is an artist collective of four emcees, DJs, music producers and graffiti artists. Collaborating with Bhoir and the tribes in the area, they came up with an original soundtrack with tribal beats and mesmerising Tarpa (tribal wind instrument). The soundtrack was composed by Naar and Abhishek Shindolkar with the chorus and the verses in marathi by Bhoir. The three emcees wrote their verses in the language they felt comfortable and was later passed on to Joshua Fernendez for arranging, mixing and mastering.

But the film had its share of challenges. As Ranawat informed, “Visually there were not many challenges.The real challenge was on the ground with the tribals and the government authorities.

Besides The Warli Revolt, Ekabhuya Animation also had created Mizaaj.  Mizaaj is a beautiful track by The Local Train- Music Band. The film which looks into the fast paced world where technology is infused in our day to day lives and we fail to notice simple expressions of life. The adventure of meeting someone or the possibility of interaction with a stranger, sharing a common emotion is diminishing as we give more importance to the virtual world. This virtual world is becoming more real. 

“Keeping this thought in mind, we were exploring the mundane pattern of this human behaviour and breaking free from the cycle. The storytelling style was open ended as each individual will interpret the visuals in their own manner. We also wanted to break the pattern of feeding information. Different experiences of each person combined together completes a larger fractal pattern,” shared Ranawat.

Mizaaj is an outcome of the collaboration of The Local Train and Ekabhuya Animation on this project has been a very memorable journey. The video is fast paced and talks about technology, personal freedom or freedom as an illusion, art , music, industry, media and forced information.There is a sense of a journey, feeling of despair and hope, a call to free oneself from virtual bonds. It is a call to pull the plug from the virtual world which is today’s reality.

About the execution of the film, Ranawat concluded, “The style in the video is a photo-montage style inspired from Hannah Höch a German Artist, originator of photo-montage style. It is a type of collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media. We have used more than 10,000 elements in the video which is a small fraction of the amount of information an average person consumes in a day. Use of photographic images and news-paper clippings  allowed us to create an abstract world keeping the essence of realism intact. The style also became an integral part of the story-telling as we played with the perspective and scale to convey a narrative symbolically. We are not medium bound as we used many techniques from 2D, 3D, photo clippings, also shot some of the sequences.”

With such different topics covered in their own unusual way, Ekabhuya Animation definitely promises to gift us better and amazing works of art in the coming days.

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