Assassin's Creed 3 - reveal trailer

Since this is a great expectation I decided to write about this trailer. However it is really short and somewhat mysterious and foggy. In concise: we leave Ezio back and join to Conor, a halfblood Native American-British assassin and participate in the War of Independence of the XVIII. century colonial America.

The choice of the character is a nice one, he is half British and half Native American. This symbolizes the change itself between the two worlds. The change which carries both but neither but the essence of them both making the two identical. This is not only derived from the character and background only. The tomahawk and the bow clearly represents his Native American roots while his coat resembles to European uniforms. Actually I think his blue collar is closer to the French than to the English army. Or maybe he already has the connection to the revolutionary army. 

The land of America is represented as a cruel and dangerous place where only the strongest survives. The wolves at 0.30 indicate that this is the only law here. The switch between the night scenes and the daylight scene with the wolves is a nice idea to emphasize the metaphor. In the one hand, we see how the wolves tear apart slowly a dead body while in the night we see how only one assassin kills all of the soldiers. First this is a nice full contrast: for the daylight it seems that a pack of wolves tear apart one body while we see in the night scenes that its only one assassin (wolf) who kills the many soldiers.

On an other level it shows that history happens on various layers or reality. The facts on the surface do not always explain everything that happens. Since the switching makes a psychological parallel between night and day, surface and reality, it has a major significance that the revolution takes place at daylight.

This indicates that the revolution is just the surface as many other things in history, and underneath a lot of hidden or forgotten individual effort made these things possible. 

Now some words on its look. Well this is a release trailer but apparently the basis of the later marketing project, not just some slideshow or some an ingame footage. 

At the beginning there are some nice lightnings indicating that the picture is computer-generated (1.18 on the big branch lying on the ground). This is a nice little detail. The dust-snow particle systems are very nice, this is a huge snow, and it is very cold. The continuous snowing lets the author not to bother with the traces. However if you watch closely at 0.31 they do not really want to do that anyway. This is clear from the fact that the arriving wolf almost does not leave any traces in the snow. I am not a ranger but I am sure that one can follow much deeper traces in the snow. And since you can see that it is moving under its feet, it should not be frozen yet. I think the general problem with snow here is that it has a little bit confused behavior. At 0.38 we see that there is some snow leaving the rock with the assassin. But such a little amount entails that the snowing is just started. Now this is a very difficult issue. Because it needed to start for a while to cover everything. Let suppose that it is very cold there. Then the redcoats should be semi-frozen out there as well as our assassin. No matter why they do not have proper winter clothes or at least blankets with them by the beginning of the scene they should have been covered by snow (when they meet Connor). At 0.33 you clearly see that there is no such thing as snow on their clothes. Not even on the one who is surprised on the back of his horse (this rules out the possibility that they just took off their blankets). 

Now for the tarzan-parkour scene. The trees could have had a little bit more movement but never mind let assume that they are frozen. Well I think they should have moved at least that amount to be released the supposedly just fallen snow. I mean Connor has the weight of an adult man. This is a great disturbance in the balance of any tree. But it is clearly enough to get some snow to fall. And remember at least some of the snow just has fallen. 

This makes it look like as if the trees were purely painted white. And this is supported at 0.58 where we have this side-cover for the trees. If the snow is just that deep, there cannot be such a big storm (especially not in a forest) just before the snowfall during the night.

But enough of snow. In general there is a beautiful forest shown in the trailer. Forests are very hard to make because their organic system is difficult to mimic. You cannot just throw some logs onto each other. And here we have this. This is covered by beautiful northern dawn lighting which makes it very realistic. The parkour scene has great animation. I feel the flow of the movement a little bit hooked up sometimes but this gives the impression as if in the air he could change direction by muscle movement. You can change your movement in the air if you are trained enough so maybe it is just too strong to see from the outside because you do not often see it done.

I think one point could have been considered for correction at 1.02. The bow on the back is ready for shoot. If you check the string on his chest it is not that stiff. It should cut into his coat with much more tension in this state. However if they have moved the end of the strings a little bit towards the middle of the bow it would not be prepared for shooting. This would let them to have the somewhat loose string.

Now the face of the army leader was a real surprise. It lacks most of the details as if it was burnt. His mouth synchronization is perfect though.

I really liked the overall idea of this trailer however I miss some minor details and consistency from the final product. The concept I think is very nice. This time we need to ask the director about the snow for example. 

Story: 10/10 (I think the story for a launch trailer has a lot in it. Not too intense but still quite complex to let us feel the character of the situation. It opens up a nice perspective.)
Director: 9/10 (This snow thing is a really hard task. It is only important because unconsciously it builds up or decreases our feeling of reality).

Modelling: 7/10 (That face at the end is really disturbing.)

Animation: 7/10 (Few movements I did not understand, like the one when he pulls the tomahawk out of the officers head. Or the wolf stepping onto the snow. Or the arm movement of the general.)
Render and lights: 8/10 (Nice dawn-lights. However the night scene is a little bit too bright. It makes some cartoonish effect. Very classic in from the '60 to the '90 but not realistic. A forest when it is snowing is really dark. After the snowing it becomes lighter when the clouds are gone.)
Material/textures: 8/10 (Again I miss some dirt from the clothes and some blood. Blood on the red coat is not just additional red dye. And if you face-shoot someone with an old gun, the head is covered with black gunpowder. I miss that too.)
Photography: 10/10 (Nice compositions. Smooth ambiance for the colonial forest.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Intensive switching between very different scenes without the feel of disturbance. Classic idea delivered perfectly.)
Music: 10/10 (Classic Assassin's creed soundtrack. Nice and smooth adaptation for the revolution.)
Visual concept: 10/10 (Great concept concerning all of the little details about clothes, scenes, the forest. Well done.)

Overall:8.9/10

Breakdown of the Witcher2 trailer

Great video from Platige Image the makers of the intro to Witcher 2.

This is a breakdown of the video which lets you see the different layers of the video.

Enjoy!

I guess you love this.

If you do check out the following interview at CG society with Maciej Jackiewicz (CG Supervisor Platige Image) by Paul Hellard

Human Head: Prey 2 - Bounty trailer

Human Head created a world by mixing the best of sci-fi western so far (most people identify the genre with Star Wars and Blade Runner which is a good guess but it still oversimplifies the issue). Primarily I would distinguish sci-fi western from the genre of Cowboys and Aliens. This is not the type of world where cowboys wear hats and ride horses. It is the future of that world where people and culture are the same but adopted to  a more advanced technical level.

They begin with a 20th century airplane scene, we do not know why we are there but clearly we are on a journey. Airplanes are the symbols of many things and I think it is a very strong thing for an overture. In one hand the airplane is the symbol of safe travel. This aspect is very strong in the trailer. In the other hand airplanes are the tools for conquering the world and make it similar to the wild west globally. This is less important here. And thirdly airplanes and the ability to fly altogether is the symbol of human capability to face and overcome any (sometimes impossible) challenges. This can be read into this but not a necessary part of the thing. 

However strong the different aspects are I believe that all are present among these cuts. 

On the airplane, we are safe and calm, this is emphasized by showing the air-marshal on the first shoot walking between the line of seats. We watch people looking out of the window. There are empty seats so we know that there is no emergency, just an ordinary Sunday flight from LA to New York (or whatever). By having the air-marshal on board we see that it is (still) the wild west where they had Marshals to accompany and defend the property of the state on travel (mainly cargo owned by the treasury or criminals as he does here). Just to clarify some confusions about this concept let me give a short historical summary of these services. United States Marshal Service was founded in 1789 while Federal Air Marshal services started by Kennedy (1963) to secure important or high risk flights. An air marshal in this sense is not to be confused with an air marshal in the military ranking system which is a high responsibility rank.  

The wild west aspect is emphasized by a historical confusion in the trailer. Our hero has the Federal Marshal Service badge instead of the Air Marshal Service badge. This can be considered as a mistake but since we are in the future the two services could have been merged by that time so this is not necessarily a mistake. I would understand this as being the artistic expression of the above detailed complex symbolism and therefore an alteration by intention. 

The two different badges

Of course suddenly something terrible happens and our Deputy U.S. Marshal crashes with his plane to somewhere out of Earth. Now this part is a little bit confusing. It looks great when earth is way behind the horizon but the audience just needs to make an intellectual jump about where we are at the moment.

This intellectual jump creates the atmosphere of being lost. We feel exactly the same as one would after such a crash. The only possible crash site seems to be the Moon. But wait a minute. On the moon our hero could not really survive. So where we are? And how a plane crashes to the moon. That thing cannot be that simple. Then comes the relief: "ah the aliens... that explains everything". 

Now if we stop for a minute. The highest expectations from the human capability to fly was to reach the stars or at least the moon. This was at the top of the twentieth century's technical advancement. We could say that we almost crashed into the moon (metaphorically speaking) by the speed of the technical development of the last few decades. There are people out there in their 40s who just could not catch up and are still shocked by the new world just have been built. A great number of people could not adapt to this new world and they feel like our hero in the trailer. They remember where they came from (Earth in the trailer, wild west of the '60s-'80s in their minds). If one thinks that this is an old generation one should think about the origin of the education and cultural heritage of our generation. Kids born around 1990 still played more cowboy games back in the garden then WOW. Now these kids face those aliens who were raised on e-mail, facebook, x-box. What can a wannabe cowboy guy do on this new planet? I think this is the question through which this genre should be understood. I know its sounds oldish but hello (!!!) its a PG18 game. 

So we are crashed into the future, where there are only aliens... and Johny Cash so the wild west survives as it always does. By the opening shot on this new world our deputy marshal jumps into this messy jungle and starts to kick ass. I think, but this is not the strongest claim about the trailer, that there is something supporting my interpretation in the appearance of the aliens he hunts down. Both suffer from the stereotypical physical symptoms of being an info-mage.

Our old-fashioned marshal arrives to a city merged from classic sci-fi visions like Blade Runner, Judge Dredd, Star Wars (Coruscant), Fifth Element. The interesting thing is that not much transport is present in the city so its a perfect site for freerun or parkour. 

This feature of the set is fully exploited later. The streets have several levels and they are more like little islands to gather on not real routes for handling everyday business or sell or serve any functions. It is true that at the beginning (at 1:36) there is a spot in yellow light what can be a bar or a small shop but it is clearly empty and nobody is there making it completely dead. Of course on could say that after a shootout its normal for the staff to hide but the rest of the civilians seem to be quite ignorant to the gunfire. If this is so then I would assume some of them would continue shopping as well not just standing around the gunfight. This calmness is a little strange though and its only function could be to make the criminal push them out of his way. Since there is even a pause of shock after the murder of the bodyguards one cannot say that they just have no time to react. So either the shop should function as well (even a shocked shopkeeper would be satisfactory) or everybody should break into panic. This all matters because despite the walls and some big functionless boxes I cannot pick any life on the street. Even if it is a getto there should be some citylife. The only people we cross are thugs. But thugs standing around does not make profit without the civilians being terrorized. This is like a bad video game. You reach a point, kill the thugs who just stand there without doing nothing and move on to the next stage. Of course this is a video game trailer but even if the game itself does not create a living city just a jungle of thugs to shoot at, the trailer as a short movie should be more realistic. 

The run through the city is really mad (in a good sense) and clearly shows a great deal of obsession. We don't even think about how this guy is going to get back where he started. That seems to be an other matter.
Thanks to the graduation of introducing new features of the world we are touched with the obsession of the bounty hunter all along the pursuit. First we see that electric bola then suddenly we see the target to teleport forward then a little shootout and the slow-motion/anti-gravity grenade. Then the railway system and finally the capturing device. This all happens under approximately one minute. This much information makes people tired and we feel that after the successful catch we had enough of action. We have that "oh not again" feeling when we see more thugs approaching. Fortunately our hero has additional new devastating weapons so our attention is at the top level again: "now he will blow them!". This is required for the final joke to hit. When we see the big monstrous alien approaching we think we are screwed, this is too much. But then the computer tells us that this is a target and from that time on its just an other job to do and it should be a piece of cake. And this is the point where we are bought completely.
The best novelty is the use of the camera and the cuts. The airplane scene is live action. The crash site is blurred out but its clearly CGI we just do not care because we cannot even see what is on the picture. At the opening pictures of the animation we have unusual lights so we cannot compare it to our everyday experiences. Actually they have a pretty nice leather texture there. At 1.10 when we look down before the jump the interaction of the different lights is just amazing. That richness of lights is taken back when we face the first target. I think that is the point when they switch back to the ordinary CGI visuality. Fortunately we have the helmet-camera to distract this experience.
At the closeup of the alien (1.25) they show its beautiful anatomy but what I miss is some imperfection. Not necessarily on the face but at least some on the clothes. However I love the blood spill onto the camera at 1.31. But if you check 2.36 you clearly see that the clothes of the villain are still sterilized after such a chase. I think this hangs out of the script. He was running, jumping, falling crashing in a getto. He cannot be so clean no matter what they made his clothes of.
About the lights I already mentioned that at 1.10 they are really pretty. Not just pretty but very realistic. But that ends when the villains get some focus. At 1.33 if you freeze its clearly the lighting of a video game. Whites spots are overemphasized and burnt out. This is clearly a conceptual problem since if they put lower lights onto the street this does not happen. If you check how realistic his cap is at 2.08 with only a little shine on it you know what I mean. That much of light intensity could have been enough (for shades not for the whole run).
On the final pictures (at 3.00) we see a very difficult task to accomplish. If you see the big monster's stomach there are smooth shadows while on its head there is a shining burnout surface. It is very difficult to make such a scene to be realistic and I think they did a very good job. But I am still puzzled why did they put so much light around and why are those so strong. I think they still did a nice job at 3.04 on the marshal's shading. But that is clearly not the artificial lighting we saw before. It is more like sunshine (since its completely white).
I think the render is almost perfect, no big mistakes, no messy parts. For the anatomy its funny that they have cut out almost the full brain of the aliens. People usually put more brain to aliens to explain why they are smarter than us. I agree with the creators that this is a stupid assumption. They might have been around for only a thousand years longer and then they could have built up a more advanced culture than we have. Its a good point. And emphasizes the brainless criminal metaphor as well. The design for all the aliens are very original which is a hard work nowadays. I am not  really convinced about the flat-head ones at the beginning though but anyway you never know what nature can produce (I think star wars legalized this type of biology).

The lights (despite the concept) are very consistent and the particle systems are very nice. The background is all deeply detailed even when you see a great landscape or a long tunnel in the background. A lot of leading companies don't do that, they cover up complex details with 2D visuals. 

The only mistake I have discovered in animation is at 2:32 when the marshal jumps onto his target from the train and they both fall back. I think this is not proper physics there. If the target falls into the wall (several meters forward) the marshal should have landed there as well. It is conceivable but I think people notice that it is at least rare to happen. Actually on this part, I just have to note that I love that the villain has some accent. This is a great detail however unlikely it is for an alien to have a Russian-like English accent. (Maybe when they first arrived to earth they considered Russia as the main market?)

Story: 9/10 (Not too much happening there but it still has a lot to tell in metaphors, definitely more than a simple shootout but we barely know anything about the people or the world or even what is happening there)
Director: 9/10 (Great smooth symbolism, nice gradual storytelling, its a shame that the city is that empty of real life)

Modelling: 10/10 (Great, creative anatomy, perfect details)

Animation: 9/10 (One minor mistake with the jumping capture, otherwise perfect)
Render and lights: 10/10 (I have not found any mistake, still looking. Great job)
Material/textures: 10/10 (Same thing for the materials and textures but hey its easy for a sci-fi)
Photography: 10/10 (Dynamic camera movement. I love the switches between first person and ordinary cameras. And it is used creatively.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (I think the switching between the different types of cameras is very demanding for the editor. More would have been too much since the action is already very exhausting to watch.)
Music: 7/10 (Not the greatest toon, but perfectly fits to the rest of the movie. However it gives too much resemblance to chasing scene from Public Enemies. The reference is very nice, its the too much part only which could have been avoided.)
Visual concept: 8/10 (The overall visual concept is not that original however it uses great reference and I love it. The anatomy is super-original but the city itself does not really show anything new. Its really similar to Star Wars and especially the video games. This is supported by the lack of real life of civilians. I cannot even see real doors on the street. How these people get there where they are? The embarrassing thing is that a few more detail would have been completely enough. But our job here is to push these things not to overlook them. And I still insist that they should have lower the lights of the city a little bit.)

___________________

Overall: 9.2

Transformers Fall of Cybertron Cinematic Trailer

So in my Monday post I promised that I will tell you which brand new game trailer uses the Puscifer track: The Humbling River as its soundtrack. It is the new cinematic trailer of the under development transformers game: Fall of Cybertron. This is not an epic trailer, neither it is intended to be one. It is really a teaser since we just have the feeling that it is too short. However with the smooth music of Puscifer we are satisfied and relaxed. So it make the feeling that it is a complete and finished thing. We only know that the big robots are in a deperate fight and one of their best (everybody"s favourite) Bumblebee. We easily figure it out that this is a futile and already lost battle. So the set is very dramatic (and in this sense epic). We see that these robots have a good standard of camaraderie so they help the wounded Bumblebee (actually it is Optimus Prime himself if I 

am right).

Created by: High Moon Studios (Activision, Blizzard,) Hasbro,
Release date: 2011.dec.06.
Official title: Transformers: Fall of Cybertron - Cinematic Trailer

Well Transformers is a franchise where you can easily lost. A lot of complex and difficult things are going on. Mechanical life forms, time fluctuations, planet-transformers, great upgrades etc. So I will not try to untangle the lines (actually time fluctuation allows the story to be inconsistent as well so no hope to get around in one round).But the trailer is nicely done. In general you have smooth music with fitting slow motion animation of a great battle. It has a very heroic atmosphere which fits the story and the set.
We see some blue smoke or mist and the eyes of Optimus are slowly unfolding of this blue mist. The camera starts to pane back from his head and in the background we see some explosions so we realize that it is a war. I think this gradual way of composition is very smooth. Then we have our first shock. Oh My Dear Old... Bumblebee!!!! Cries out the kid in our heart. "WHAT HAPPENED WITH BUMBLEBEE?!!!" And we are already bought.Very cheap buy but certainly effective. Not only seeing them in a great war, but in such an EPIC!, GREAT!!, APOCALYPTIC!!! war where Bumblebee is injured so badly. And we see the robot with an injury and fading (by the loss of sparks?). Anyway the scene from the blue, uninteresting mist elevates to the highest tension in 20 seconds. Hm... that is an acceleration. Well done. The incoming attacking robots cannot reach Optimus and he does not fight for everybody's greatest concern is poor Bumblebee. Well all of us (you can admit) agree with those guys. NO MATTER WHAT BUT DEFEND BUMBLEBEE!

And again! Optimus puts him down and like a father (well a father robot at least) blinks his eyes and "tells him" that everything will be all right. Really touching scene. No matter whether robots can have feelings, no matter what will happen next we now know that it is all safe.

I think this trailer just lets us be kids again. And this is a good thing. It is really innocent. We have those feelings don't we? That these robots are strong allies of us. And we admire them for that.
Of course the final battle is not on the set. They leave us here obviously because the final battle will be included in the game. We only see the higher upgraded dinosour-like robot to throw some fire onto the enemy. And we know that everything will be ok now.

Concerning the render there are some nice things to mention. I think the lights are very evenly distributed while it is really hard to decide how such lights would look like this a good way to make the light-set. It is believable so it might be true. And that is well-enough. Same is true for the animation. This is an other planet (it is not really determined by the comic book how big it is exactly but it is determined definitely that it is indereminate what material builds it up :) no more puzzle please!) where strange creatures live. So we have no idea what is the proper setting for the gravitation. I think they could have been a little bit heavier. But how would you show that? You cannot show it by the damage they make to the environment (it is their own planet) and nor by mass movement (they should have develop some proper muscle-like things to move smoothly). So this is a really difficult task. My suggestion would be that explosion-fire should work the same way as they do on earth since we know that the atmosphere is very similar to our owns. So I think if things blow up the same way there as they do here but everything is more massive and heavier than here then there should be some different relation between explosion there and here. Maybe if bigger explosions would happen and if they would move them to less distance than they would on earth the whole thing would get a better, more alien-like framing.
The textures and materials are good enough, they are mostly the usual damaged metal. The fast changes of light makes it hard to judge what we see but I am sure about one thing. At the beginning Optimus' head looks like as if it was made of plastic. This is an easy mistake since most of us remember these guys from the toys we used to get. But I think this mistake especially for the beginning, and for a closeup and for a slow-motion is just too much. Of course we do not care but they are apparently able to make good materials so they should have corrected this.
The models are of course perfect, they are vividly animated, always turn and tumble and move their parts. So that is really nice. Huge amount of beautiful fires of explosions pampers the eye.
The only thing I miss is some particle systems. So much explosion and fire would certainly produce some soot flying in the air. And a lot of smoke probably. That would improve the visual a lot.
And two more things. One is that if there is fire on this planet there must be flammables as well. But nothing actually burns or heats (so many explosions but no heated or melted metal on the set). And if this is a war, at least some wounded dead robots would be nice since now there is only one wound on the scene the one of Bumblebee. Megatron beats one to death but then it disappears from the set. And if one is beaten to death some external marks are usually present. Like sparks, or short circuits, twitches of the body, malfunction, etc. Something indicating their agony. I think this is important for every fight scene.


Scores:

Story: 8/10 (Heroic, Romantic, Innocently touching. The "I am big but we are bigger" cliché at the end is a usual transformers thing but not necessarily applicable.)
Director: 10/10 (Nice gradual elaboration of the story and the set, and even the transformers universe.)

Modelling: 10/10 (Perfect Meshes.)

Animation: 8/10 (Consistently animated characters but no particle systems. Really rich fire animation but again no smoke or dust.)
Render and lights: 10/10 (There are no inconsistencies in lights they affect beautifully the environment.)
Material/textures: 7/10 (Good overall performance but one serious mistake at the beginning.)
Photography: 9/10 (Nice composition, no messy or empty spaces, no imbalances but there are some "we are posing together on the placard of the game" settings.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Very tough work. In such a short video a lot of thing happens. And we don't even feel that we are switching.)
Music: 10/10 (I have been listening to this music for almost a whole day. Great choice. And the audio is again very nicely attached to the music. I appreciate that the music set is not mute but in accordance with the track.)
Visual concept: 7/10 (Overall transformers illustration with some already mentioned mistakes - wounds, smoke.)

____________________
Overall: 8.9

Copyright Notice: The video is made available by http://www.transformersgame.com's youtube channel transformersgame1 by leaving the embed option open for everyone. All intellectual rights for the video are reserved for Activision and High Moon Studios. I only claim the copyright for its interpretation and evaluation.

HASBRO and its logo, TRANSFORMERS, and its associated characters are trademarks of Hasbro and are used with permission. © 2011 Hasbro. All rights reserved. Game © 2011 Activision Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Activision is a registered trademark of Activision Publishing, Inc.