Motion Graphics

What are motion graphics? They are graphics that are made from video footage, or animation by using film or animation software's to make the footage look unreal and move them to make it more entertaining and exciting. Music or voice audio could be added to make music videos or explain what it happening. It can use typography, shapes, illustrations, logo and video, these are what make it motion graphics.

Uses of motion graphics Motion graphics can be used to create many forms of entertainment for example: Music video Advertising Fashion Dance Video games Visual performance Movie opening credits Film They are used for showing video footage in a more compelling way to draw the audience/viewer toward it. Most companies are doing this to gain more consumers of their productions or products, they use them as their face and identity so when people see the video or image they know straight away what company it is, for example the McDonalds “I’m lovin it” video. Production companies often use motion graphics to make their idents and opening credits, by doing this they are separating themselves from other companies and showing their independence, for example DreamWorks, Disney and Universal.

Motion graphics: Video Games All video games are produced with motion graphics. Two games that are made with motion graphics are the Uncharted series and The Last of Us, these are both games made by the company called Naughty Dog. They use motion graphics to set up locations in the game, the characters and any other little details and elements like guns or animals, for example in Uncharted 4 they show a lemur and in The Last of Us they show giraffes and these little elements in the game make them even more impressive as they take more time to put these motions in to make the experience better for the player. Both of these games are contemporary as they were made in the 21st century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uKia6kb1fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4wWMe85Dgo

Characteristics The game uses many characteristics e.g. graphics, animation, movements and visual effects. To make the characters seem as detailed and realistic as possible they use motion capture suits, these a piece of clothing that has sensors all over them to capture every movement that the actor makes so the characters movements look real. The graphics are then based off of the movements made. Uncharted 4 used face cameras so they producers could pinpoint every facial expression they made. Also Uncharted, at first didn’t use the motion capture suits, instead the motion graphics were made by scratch, however with the last game they used motion capture. By using motion capture the movements in the game are more accurate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKFzWWO4aY

Technological issues In the first 3 uncharted games, they didn’t use motion graphics, which may suggest that the graphics that were made were not accurate to what a real movement or facial expression would look like. In both games there could be a chance that when you are in the middle of playing some glitches could pop up and ruin the experience for the player and the game company will be annoyed at it because they put so much time into the game and then one glitch could disrupt he entire game play. However the company can get feedback on the game and when they make another one they know how to improve and eliminate any disruptions and glitches. In The Last of Us it has zombies in it, this means that it might've been hard for the creators to produce the actions of the zombies as we have no idea what their movements would be, alternatively Naughty Dog were given the chance to portray zombies the way they wanted to.

Formats Uncharted 1,2 and 3 and The Last of Us are all available on PS3, however now that the PS4 has come out the resolution of the game have been improved tremendously, its in HD and the picture and saturation are more clear than on the PS3. All these games are played on 16:9 TV screens as they are larger and allow more detail to be seen Uncharted 4 is shown in 1080p and The Last of Us is shown in 720p and 1080p on PS4.

Historical Video Games Tekken is a combat game, the first one out the 6 made had to be made completely by scratch because there wasn’t any motion capture in the late 20th century, this game was released in 1994. The resolution on the game was very low and the detail couldn’t be identified, considering it was made with no motion capture suits is and didn’t have good quality it was still a great form of entertainment. The game uses graphics and visual effects, as it was the first game in the series it wasn't good but at eh time people thought it was amazing to have that kind of technology. It was played as an arcade game, on PlayStation 1 and 2, it would’ve been viewed on a small screen, maybe even curved. There may have been some technological issues e.g. glitches or long loading time.

Examples https://youtu.be/tjdvjcz9ssE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpx6hSnTMPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja8xlmarkAc https://youtu.be/r2LpOUwca94 https://youtu.be/hh5HV4iic1Y https://youtu.be/nCUiamy2KPQ https://youtu.be/RkDiA5ea2KQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMcCekxU9gc