Blizzcon

I've always wanted to go to Blizzcon though it looks like I'll have to wait still. Tickets sold out within seconds when put online at around 10am some time in America recently. Blizzcon is Blizzard's convention relevant to all things Diablo, Starcraft, and most importantly for me, Warcraft. Though I have also long considered it a networking event of sorts because the people behind Blizzard come out to speak about what went into making their games and offering some insight into how Blizzard go about it. We also get to look at yet unreleased and in-development content and by keeping an eye on how this content progresses, one can observe a workflow that one can apply to themselves.

Here for instance in the last Blizzcon (they were so busy producing the expansion in 2012 that they didn't have one), they discuss how the animations for the pandaren models had to be made so that you can tell what the model is doing from any angle as a silhouette. These animations also happen in less than a fraction of a second and it's important to note that they'll accompany any random choice of possible character animation in game, so it's important that they flow together.

They touch upon the importance of the fundamentals of squash and stretch, and how the skeletal structure of the models is vastly improved over that of their older race models - then again, the other race models were made years and years ago, and this is evidently just the technological developments that they go through and utilize. The kind of critieria they mention here is the sort of advice I have already tried taking to heart, and I try to include as many aspects of it I can in all the animation I do, now.

Since I probably won't be able to obtain an actual ticket - which can cost up to or beyond $200 and are probably bound to get more expensive due to re-sales and demand for the tickets, and because it would involve having to fly to America, I may consider buying a virtual ticket so I can look into the new advances and announcements in this particular company's games and their developments. It will have been nearly two years since the last Blizzcon, so there will definitely be some exciting announcements to look forward to.