It's all a Blur...

A couple of weeks back I celebrated my first ever Father's Day and my daughter Annabelle very thoughfully bought me an XBox game I had my eye on - Unleashed 2.

The first game had gone under my radar (I also didn't have a console then) but Unleashed 2 is amazing. The look and feel of the game is really impressive and the environments are very authentic, the set pieces between stages of the game which tell the story are really good as well.

I'm a big Star Wars fan and from an early age bought into the whole merchandising mega phenomenon that surrounds the Lucas Arts empire, pocket money was blown on figures and every birthday and christmas was an opportunity to add to my small but sacred collection.

Despite the disappointment of the three prequels which I'll not go into there has been some seriously cool Star Wars games for consoles in recent years.

I was blown away by the TV Spots for Unleashed 2. The cinematics were awesome, the first Spot I saw featured a battle between the lead character and Darth Vader - who appeared to be getting his ass kicked.

The cinematics were all created by Blur Studios and when I started looking through their site I came across cinematics they've created for another Star Wars title: The Old Republic.

Asside from the hyper realistic animation, the excellent choreographed fight sequence and the eye watering detail in the video there's a great story there which left me in 'I want to be a Jedi' euphoria.

Another thing which struck me when watching the videos and playing Unleashed 2 were the Sound FX. Is there another film out there which has such a distinctive sound? Blaster and Lightsaber sounds are just one element which binds all of the different films and games together not to forget the film intro and rolling credits which still give me goose bumps.

It's well worth taking at look at Blur's site. It's a very simple portfolio site which gives an insight into recent and past projects.

My first encounter with their work was the animated short 'Gopher Broke' which I think featured in 3D world countless years ago. I love the practise in large VFX/Animation studios of directing and producing inhouse films to learn techniques and hone skills as well as showcase their talent.

Anyway, I'm off to brush up on my lightsaber techniques and try to talk my wife into buying a gold Bikini - until next time, enjoy what your doing.