Overview
In CS 3660, we worked with the Half-Life 2 Engine to make movies. Through the entire semester we had made 3 movies, which we made sure we were a standout group for each one. One important thing I should note is that I recorded and edited all the audio in all 3 movies(with the exception of Geralds voice in the last movie)

Bob, Joe, and Peter - Movie 1
The first movie was called Bob, Joe, and Peter and chronicles a fake meeting that the teachers had with each other. Before we started production, I decided to tinker with the Half-Life experience, which I found out how to completely replace and add in new characters into the game, which we were the only group that figured this out throughout the entire year, actually. With this new discovery, we decided to actually put our teachers in the game(not including Bob, who was already in the game). This gave us a whole new element of awe in the movie.

Without further a do, Bob, Joe, and Peter:


PSA: Protect Our Ants - Movie 2
This one was interesting, and in my opinion, still unfinished(unfortunately). We decided to take a completely different approach and remove humans from the storyline(mostly at least). We dug around for an interesting, non-human character that we could make a grabbing story, and bingo, the PSA: Protect Our Ants story line was born. We were on track for most of the production...We built a custom level that we felt fit the scene, and we had all the effects that we felt would grab the viewer, but I had a family emergency to attend to, while in the process of getting the characters to move through the level as expected(as you can tell, became a much harder feat to accomplish). After 3 days and 2 all-nighters I managed to get the video to the team on time. Don't get me wrong, the movie turned out great, in my opinion, but it kills me to know that it could have been much better.

Without further a do, PSA: Protect Our Ants:


Just Another Hero Story - Final Movie
Our last movie was a big group project(team of 10 I believe). This is where things begin to REALLY stand out from the rest of the class. During Spring Break, I wrote a java program that would take the character files from Half-Life 2, and would allow you to scale all or just portions of their bodies. I did it as an experiment, but after some tinkering I was able to make some extremely interesting characters. It should be noted that this wasn't perfect but it worked, and so I pitched the idea of using completely customized characters...ones that didn't look anything like the characters we started with, that would stand out way above the rest of the group. They all agreed on this, so I started dishing out characters. The most notable ones that I created were:

Gerald, Beast, and Mr. Chomworth

all based off the same initial character. Throughout the process, I ended up having to retool these guys because they were having errors in some of their moving parts(like their mouths and fingers), and actually came up with beautiful, and fluid looking characters that worked 100% (compare Gerald from the beginning of the movie and Gerald at the end of the movie for an example).

On top of the characters, I also made some of the most important scenes, including all the scenes in the school, the theater scene, and also the final scene in the park.

I'm done jabbering about the work; Here's Just Another Hero Story: