Bill Davis (artist)
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Bill Davis (artist)
William Robert Davis, aka Bill Davis (born May 1949 in Venice, Los Angeles, California, Venice, California), is an American illustrator, animation director and designer, graphic designer and Painting, painter. He was the creative director at Sierra On-Line and Rocket Science Games during the 1990s. Davis is the founder and creative director of Mother Productions, a graphic design firm which creates animation, motion graphics, logos and other graphic designs for on-air and online purposes. As the creative director at Sierra On-Line, Davis significantly advanced video game design by incorporating Hollywood production techniques. He introduced storyboarding, hand-drawn animations, and advanced animation methods, and he established the role of art director to enhance the wikt:coherence, coherence and artistic quality of PC games. Career Davis attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he graduated in 1971 with a BFA degree and high honors. Television Davis was a lead ...
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Venice, Los Angeles, California
Venice is a neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles within the Westside region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Venice was founded by Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a seaside resort town. It was an independent city until 1926, when it was annexed by Los Angeles. Venice is known for its canals, a beach, and Ocean Front Walk, a pedestrian promenade that features performers, fortune-tellers, and vendors. History 19th century In 1839, a region called La Ballona that included the southern parts of Venice, was granted by the Mexican government to Ygnacio and Augustin Machado and Felipe and Tomas Talamantes, giving them title to Rancho La Ballona. Later this became part of Port Ballona. Founding Venice, originally called "Venice of America", was founded by wealthy developer Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a beach resort town, west of Los Angeles. He and his partner Francis Ryan had bought of ocean-front property south of Santa Monica in 1891. They built a resort town on t ...
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The Gong Show
''The Gong Show'' is an American amateur talent contest franchised by Sony Pictures Television to many countries. It was broadcast on NBC's daytime schedule from June 14, 1976, through July 21, 1978, and in first-run syndication from 1976 to 1980 and 1988 to 1989, and was revived in 2017 for broadcast on ABC. The show was created and originally produced by Chuck Barris, who also served as host for the NBC run and from 1977 to 1980 in syndication. Its most recent version was executive-produced by Will Arnett and hosted by Tommy Maitland, a fictional character performed by Mike Myers (uncredited in Season 1). ''The Gong Show'' is known for its absurdist humor and style, with the actual competition secondary to the often outlandish acts presented; a small cash prize has typically been awarded to each show's winner. Format Each show presented a competition of amateur performers of often dubious talent, with a panel of three celebrity judges. If any judge considered an act to b ...
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Art Director
Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the vision of an artistic production. In particular, they are in charge of its overall visual appearance and how it communicates visually, stimulates moods, contrasts features, and psychologically appeals to a target audience. The art director makes decisions about visual elements, what artistic style(s) to use, and when to use motion. One of the biggest challenges art directors face is translating desired moods, messages, concepts, and underdeveloped ideas into imagery. In the brainstorming process, art directors, colleagues and clients explore ways the finished piece or scene could look. At times, the art director is responsible for solidifying the vision of the collective imagination while resolving conflicting agendas ...
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Squash And Stretch
Squash and stretch is the phrase used to describe "by far the most important" of the 12 basic principles of animation, described in the book '' The Illusion of Life'' by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Basis The principle is based on observation that only stiff objects remain inert during motion, while objects that are not stiff, although retaining overall volume, tend to change shape in an extent that depends on inertia and elasticity of the different parts of the moving object. To illustrate the principle, a half-filled flour sack dropped on the floor, or stretched out by its corners, was shown to be retaining its overall volume as determined by the object's Poisson's ratio In materials science and solid mechanics, Poisson's ratio (symbol: ( nu)) is a measure of the Poisson effect, the deformation (expansion or contraction) of a material in directions perpendicular to the specific direction of loading. The value .... Examples of the elasticity of the human body in m ...
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Rotoscoping
Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, live-action film images were projected onto a glass panel and traced onto paper. This projection equipment is referred to as a rotoscope, developed by Polish-American animator Max Fleischer. This device was eventually replaced by computers, but the process is still called rotoscoping. In the visual effects industry, ''rotoscoping'' refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background. Technique Rotoscoping has often been used as a tool for visual effects in live-action films. By tracing an object, the filmmaker creates a silhouette (called a matte) that can be used to extract that object from a scene for use on a different background. Rotoscoping in the digital domain is often aided by motion-tracking and onion-skinning software. R ...
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Storyboarding
A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of simple illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of Previsualization, pre-visualizing a film, motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Productions during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios. Origins Many large budget silent films were storyboarded, but most of this material has been lost during the reduction of the studio archives during the 1970s and 1980s. Special effects pioneer Georges Méliès is known to have been among the first filmmakers to use storyboards and pre-production art to visualize planned effects. However, storyboarding in the form widely known today was developed at the Walt Disney Feature Animation, Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s. In the biography of ...
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Cinema Of The United States
The cinema of the United States, primarily associated with major film studios collectively referred to as Hollywood, has significantly influenced the global film industry since the early 20th century. Classical Hollywood cinema, a filmmaking style developed in the 1910s, continues to shape many American films today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are often credited with modern cinema's origins, American filmmaking quickly rose to global dominance. As of 2017, more than 600 English-language films were released annually in the U.S., making it the fourth-largest producer of films, trailing only India, Japan, and China. Although the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce English-language films, they are not directly part of the Hollywood system. Due to this global reach, Hollywood is frequently regarded as a transnational cinema with some films released in multiple language versions, such as Spanish and French. Contemporary Hollyw ...
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Video Graphics Array
Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. The term can now refer to the computer display standard, the 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector, or the Graphics display resolution, resolution characteristic of the VGA hardware. VGA was the last IBM graphics standard to which the majority of IBM PC compatible computer manufacturers conformed, making it the Lowest common denominator#Colloquial usage, lowest common denominator that virtually all post-1990 PC graphics hardware can be expected to implement. VGA was adapted into many extended forms by third parties, collectively known as Super VGA, then gave way to custom graphics processing units which, in addition to their proprietary interfaces and capabilities, continue to implement common VGA graphics modes and interfaces to the presen ...
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Sound Card
A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio interfaces used for professional audio applications. Sound functionality can also be integrated into the motherboard, using components similar to those found on plug-in cards. The integrated sound system is often still referred to as a ''sound card''. Sound processing hardware is also present on modern video cards with HDMI to output sound along with the video using that connector; previously they used a S/PDIF connection to the motherboard or sound card. Typical uses of sound cards or sound card functionality include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or audio, presentation, education and entertainment (games) and video projection. Sound cards are also used for computer-b ...
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Ken Williams (game Developer)
Kenneth A. Williams (born October 30, 1954) is an American businessman and game programmer who co-founded On-Line Systems together with his wife Roberta Williams. On-Line Systems eventually became Sierra On-Line and was ultimately renamed Sierra Entertainment. The couple were leading figures in the development of graphical adventure games. At its height, Sierra employed nearly 1,000 people prior to its acquisition in 1996. History Early years Williams was born on October 30, 1954, in Evansville, Indiana but later grew up in Simi Valley, California. Ken and Roberta's early contributions to the computer game industry were partially chronicled in the book '' Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution''. He wrote the textbook ''Apple II Computer Graphics'' and articles for '' Softline''. Sierra On-Line Williams and wife Roberta co-founded On-Line Systems in 1979. Sierra's notable online service, the ImagiNation Network, was purchased by AT&T in 1994. Ken Williams served a ...
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Game Design
Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, Wargame (video games), war games, or simulation games.In ''Elements of Game Design'', game designer Robert Zubek defines game design by breaking it down into three elements: * Game mechanics and systems, which are the rules and objects in the game. * Gameplay, which is the interaction between the player and the mechanics and systems. In ''Chris Crawford on Game Design'', the author summarizes gameplay as "what the player does". * Player experience, which is how users feel when they are playing the game. In Academy, academic research, game design falls within the field of game studies (not to be confused with game theory, which studies strategic decision making, primarily in non-game situations). Process of design Game design is part of a game's development from conc ...
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