Clash Royale is a game made by Supercell that has many similar aspects to the game Clash Of Clans. Clash Royale was released on January 4, 2016. As soon as it came out there were many players already. This was mostly because Supercell had already made Itself known with the game Clash Of Clans. This attracted many players very early on and caused the game to be successful from the beginning. Supercell tried to bring it's audience from Clash Of Clans by implementing many similar aspects from Clash Of Clans to Clash Royale. For example, both games use similar troops to fight. They both have the wizard, valkyries, archers, barbarians, etc. Although both games have many similar characters, the gameplay is very different. Clash Of Clans is based on on building up your own village to stop attackers from getting your resources while Clash Royale is based on placing troops down stop stop the opponent from destroying your towers. Clash Of Clans is a much more slow paced game because while you are playing there is not much to do while in Clash Royale you can constantly battle. This causes Clash Royale to be played for more time at a time while Clash Of Clans is usually played for only 10-15 minutes in a row. Depending on the person this can be a good thing or a bad thing because if you tend to like games that are more relaxing and calm, you would probably prefer Clash Of Clans, while if you like games that are more skill based and faster paced, you would probably like Clash Royale more. Overall these two Supercell games have many differences but have some similarities that show how they are related.
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Over the past couple of weeks I have started to learn how to use the program Adobe Animate CC. My first impression of this program was that it is fairly simple to understand and use. For example if you do something once and you want to do the same thing again it is not hard to remember what steps you took, actually I usually only needed to do something once before I had it memorized. This makes learning how to use this program effectively much easier. Although it was simple to understand, it had many problems when I actually tried to animate something. Over the course of two weeks I made an animation of a monster eating some sort of blob that flew in from off the screen. During this project I had many problems. The most annoying problem was that sometimes when I was trying to move a certain object in a certain way it would "guess" the tweens incorrectly. Normally this would not be a problem but for some reason whenever I tried to add any shape hints to try and fix the problem, it made the problem worse. This was extremely annoying because there was no solution that I could find without deleting the whole part. This made me lose time that I did not have. Another problem was that about 50% of the time I added an easing to an animation it would not work and again the only way to fix that was to reanimate the part. These two problems together made me lose much time that I needed. Although these problems wasted time, overall, Adobe Animate CC had many good qualities such as it's simpleness and the many different tools you had to your disposition. A tool I really found useful was the use of symbols. This made animating certain parts much easier because it did not require using shape hints. Overall Adobe Animate CC is a useful program but has many different problems that can affect your work time put in.
Idle animations are little movements that a character in a video game does when the player has not moved in a bit of time. These animations can be complex or simple depending on what the artist is going for. For example, in the game Sonic CD, the character Sonic The Hedgehog impatiently taps his foot while glaring at the player and after a longer time he ends the game saying "Your plumber MCM could never." This is a fairly simple idle animation compared to Earthworm Jim. In Earthworm Jim, the character does many different movements such as jumping rope with his stretchy head, throwing his gun in the air and letting it fall on his head, showing off his muscles and then his pants fall down showing his underwear with hearts on it, etc. These idle animations are all very creative and unique and do not necessarily have to be complex and hard to make. An idle animation that shows this is in Aladdin. When standing still he throws an apple in the air an catches it repeatedly. This shows how the character is calm and patient, and is willing to wait a little compared to Sonic's glaring and foot tapping. Many professionals say they prefer Earthworm Jim's idle animation because it is creative and was different from most other idle animations. My favorite idle animation is probably Mario's in the game Mario 64 because it really shows how he is a lazy plumber who is basically being forced to go through many difficult places to save the princess. I also like it because it is fairly relatable, if I was forced to do nothing for a long time I know that I would try to fall asleep. Overall, idle animations can show a characters personality and their style.
Citations “What Makes a Great Idle Animation? Devs Share Their Favorites.” Gamasutra: The Art & Business of Making Games, 11 Feb. 2019. Adobe After Effects is a program that is used to combine multiple images into a single animation. I have just started using this program and I already see how useful it can be. I can tell it is useful because it has many tools much like other adobe programs. So far, the few tools I have used have been very simple to understand but can be extremely useful even to higher level animators. I noticed that the working space is smaller compared to Photoshop and Illustrator and at first I couldn't think of a reason for that but then I noticed that where there was normally working space in Photoshop or Illustrator, there were tools in that space instead. My original thought was that there were more tools in After Effects than other Adobe programs but because I just started using After Effects I do not want to make any false statements. Although one negative thing I noticed was that to do some things in Adobe After Effects, it takes a long time to load. This can be really annoying as sometimes it can take up to ten minutes to load. I think that if someone is on a tight schedule and this happens it could affect them in negative ways. Overall Adobe After Effects is a useful program with many tools to use and can help a lot.
Brawl Stars Game ReviewBrawl Stars is a mobile game released on December 12, 2018. It was made by the company Supercell which also made other famous mobile games such as Clash Of Clans and Clash Royale. unlike Clash Of Clans and Clash Royale, it uses different troops. For example, Clash Of Clans uses many of the same troops as Clash Royale such as the hog rider and P.E.K.K.A. But Supercell took a different approach at Brawl Stars and they created a whole set of new characters. This creates a new level of diversity from the other Supercell games. Another difference is that Brawl Stars is entirely online unlike Clash Of Clans where most of the game is spent at your own base either upgrading stuff or building stuff. This creates a new level of socialization between players and helps people enjoy their experience with the game. Brawl Stars also has a different ranking system than Clash Of Clans and Clash Royale because in Brawl Stars it is much slower to gain trophies. This means everyone is much more compact trophy wise and this creates a sense of competitiveness. Lastly, Brawl Stars implemented a way to unlock items that were not in Clash Of Clans or Clash Royale, this is the trophy road, it is a series of items that you unlock as you gain more trophies. This encourages people to continue playing to unlock cool ne items. Overall Brawl Stars is a very different game compared to Clash Of Clans and Clash Royale.
I have been using Adobe Illustrator for about a couple weeks now and I have made some opinions on some things. One thing I really like using and find very easy to use is the shape tool, along with this is the shape builder tool, these tools are often used together to make certain shapes that are irregular or cannot be made with the regular shapes. This helps me very often for example when I had to make a ring shape for one of graphics which cannot be made with the elipse tool, so what I did was I made two circles, one smaller than the other and colored the bigger one the color I needed and the other one white, then I put the smaller one on top of the bigger one and the using the shape builder tool I removed the center part of the circles leaving me with only the colored ring. While I used this for a basic shape, it can be used at much higher levels. Another tool I think is very helpful is the pen tool. I believe this tool is the most useful tool in Illustrator. Although I think it is extremely useful, I tend to struggle while using it but I believe that with practice I can improve quickly. A good website to practice with the pen tool is "The Bezier Game." This game helped me learn a lot about the pen tool in about thirty minutes, I learned how to use alt, and shift appropriately with the pen tool, and how to curve the line effectively. Summary
Citations
wikiHow. “How to Use Adobe Illustrator Pen Tool.” WikiHow, WikiHow, 21 June 2017, www.wikihow.com/Use-Adobe-Illustrator-Pen-Tool. “How to Use Illustrator's Shape Builder Tool.” Dummies, 10 Dec. 2018, www.dummies.com/software/adobe/illustrator/how-to-use-illustrators-shape-builder-tool/. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are two applications that can be used to edit or make 2 dimensional graphics. While both are made by Adobe, Photoshop and Illustrator are very different. The main difference is that Photoshop uses bitmap graphics while Illustrator uses vector graphics. The difference between these two types of graphics is that bitmap graphics use pixels which are little squares of color while vector graphics uses mathematical equations to create graphics. Although this the main difference between Photoshop and Illustrator, there are many other differences, such as the tools in each application. For example, Photoshop has many tools that Illustrator does not such as the marquee tool, the move tool, and the crop tool, although Illustrator also has many tools that Photoshop does not have such as the shape tool, the shape builder tool, and the line tool. This allows for people to use a certain application based on their needs. For example, in a comic book or cartoon typically the graphics used are vector graphics while bitmap graphics are used in websites and print materials. The differences in these two applications can help artists better zone in on what type of graphic they need and what tools they need to create that graphic. Although these two applications are very different, the parts that are the same in both applications generally work the same way in both Photoshop and Illustrator. For example, the magic wand tool works exactly the same in Illustrator than it does in Photoshop. This can make the switch from Photoshop to Illustrator or vice versa, much easier.
Clash Of Clans is a primarily mobile game that was released in august of 2012. It can be played on mobile, or on PC, although very few people play it on PC. Clash Of Clans is a game that is about you creating your own village and slowly upgrading and buying better things to defend your village from others who want to steal your loot. Although most of the game is upgrading defenses and other buildings, you can also train an army to go and attack people and steal their gold, elixir, and dark elixir. This is, in my opinion, the most fun part of the game because it requires real strategy on how to deploy your troops and spells. In Clash Of Clans there is also a trophy system that encourages people to try and attack better people because they give you mire trophies and eventually you can earn gems for reaching certain leagues. these gems can be used to speed up upgrades or armies. Another way to motivate players to earn trophies is that there is a monthly season reset for the trophies so everyone who stopped playing cannot get attacked, this prevents people from getting easy trophies from "dead bases." The last motivation for people to gain trophies is that the top 3 players with the most trophies at the end of each season get a prize. this has encouraged people to buy many gems to max out their village and try to win the prizes. Overall this game is very fun even though there is not much to do while you are playing it but if you get bored you can create your own clan so you can invite your friends and talk to them.
For the past couple of months I have been using Photoshop and created multiple graphics using Photoshop. Over this time period I have made some opinions on some of the tools used in Photoshop. My favorite Photoshop tool is the mask tool. This tool is my favorite because it is extremely useful when you are trying to remove portions of a graphic. I find this tool better than the other tools because it is a non-destructive method of removing parts of images or graphics, unlike the eraser tool which is irreversible after it is saved whereas the mask tool allows you to take off the layer mask and go back to what the graphic or image was like before the mask was applied. This option allows you to go back on what you did in case you like the original image or graphic more than the graphic with the layer mask without having to completely restart. Not only is this tool non-destructive, but it is also extremely simple to use and takes about 30 seconds to apply. This makes it very efficient and useful especially during times when you have a lot of work or a close deadline. This tool also can be used at many different levels of graphic design as it's purpose is always useful and needed even though it is so simple and easy to use. Although this tool is my favorite, I also find the quick select tool very important because it allows you to quickly select an area of a graphic. This makes it easy to apply different filters or anything else on a certain area. Although they are both useful, I find the mask tool a little bit more useful.
Fortnite is a game that came out in early 2017 with it's original game mode "Save The World" where you are one of the few survivors left on Earth. Your mission is to rescue people that are still alive and to protect them from the storm. Although this game mode came out first, the reason Fortnite took off in 2017 was because Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, added a battle royale game mode in October 2017. A battle royale is a lobby with a certain amount of players and if you die you do not respawn, you are forced to start a new game and the last player alive wins. This game mode caused the game to instantly blow up and after two months, everyone had either heard about it or played it. While at this point Epic Games had made themselves known, the game continued to grow. While Epic Games is doing their best, many players complain about updates and weapons that make the game unbalanced, such as changing the amount of materials gained, this is a huge problem for Epic Games because players are not playing the game anymore because of the new material updates claiming that it is making the skill gap smaller and trying to make new players feel better than they actually are. Epic Games have not backtracked on any of their changes so far and has caused for people to stop playing Fortnite. While many players are leaving Fortnite behind, there are just as many new players to come in but these players, generally having just started playing are much worse, making players who have been playing for a long time feel like the game has gotten too easy for them so they start to leave too. This is causing a cycle of people leaving, then coming back and so on. Overall Fortnite is still extremely popular and probably will be for a long time.
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My name is Vinicio Maresca and my family is from Italy, however, I was born in the US. I will be adding to this blog page as time goes by.
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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