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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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As you may have become aware wargames are currently the gaming genre I am most excited about. In 2011 the wargames I own have been getting played far more times than any other genre in my collection. In fact, as I look through the years new releases, there are very few non-wargames I am considering buying. In the coming weeks I hope to do a year in review post, there I will elaborate on the reasons why I’m not as interested in many of the new releases. In this post however, I wish discuss why I enjoy playing wargames.
My recent infatuation with wargames is largely due to me having met some new friends with a common interest in games like Twilight Struggle and Memoir 44. Ever since our first games night we have met up quite regularly and my new friends have introduced to a variety of other wargames of varying complexity and style; games like Successors, Hammer of the Scots, Manoeuver, Combat Commander, Sekigahara and Hannibal RvC just to name a few.
For me, I have found wargames to be a delight. I am enjoying being able to research the history, the people, the times and if the gameplay reflects the subject matter, (which it usually does) I enjoy being able to be completely immersed in the history. I have lately been spending many hours watching documentaries, listening to podcasts about history and reading about several historical periods.
In general I think games based on history can offer an experience unrivaled by a game based on fiction, wargame or not. This is dependent of course on how interested and informed you are about the historical period. The reason I feel this way is because history offers a theme for a game backed by almost endless information. As an example, if I want to learn more about Hannibal Barca because I am interested in the game Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage, there is no shortage of literature, theories and artworks about the subject. If I want to learn more about the universe of Twilight Imperium the information on the topic is obviously much more limited. That’s not to say there are not exceptions though, Arkham Horror may not be based on history but it is backed by a substantial amount of information in regards to the games theme. I dare say I could spend just as much time reading up on Cthulhu as Hannibal. Another added bonus of a historical setting for a game is that it can be great fun to see history repeat itself during play, but it can also be just as much fun to see an alternate ending begin to emerge and imagine what might have been. Imagine would the world be like today if Hannibal did take control of Rome? What would the world be like today if Julius Caesar died in Gaul, would the month of July still be called July?
It was Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage that first made me realize how knowing about the history of a game can make the game much more enjoyable. I had played Hannibal: RvC for the first time not really knowing who Hannibal was or what he had achieved. During my first play of the game I could see the gameplay itself had potential, but I felt it dragging at times and it just didn’t really click with me. I then went home and read up on Hannibal and watched a few youtube videos about his efforts in Italy. After being drawn in by the Carthaginian’s exploits, I was much more enthusiastic about the game.
In school (which for me was 11 years ago) I was never taught much about world history. I’ll admit though, even if I were taught it at school, at that point in my life I probably wouldn’t have found it very interesting anyway. So for me to be at the age I am which is 27, this sudden interest in history came as a bit of a shock to me. I would never have thought I would spend as much time as I have learning about events that happened up to 2000 years ago. I find it interesting how in my case it was because of gaming that I became interested in history in the first place. I also find it fascinating that it has become kind of like a snow ball effect, an interest in Hannibal lead to an interest in Julius Caesar, which then for me lead to an interest in the Crusades (and of course many other topics). The good thing about being a latecomer to the wargaming aspect of this hobby is that the wargaming range is now so extensive. For example, I wanted to buy a game about the Crusades after watching a documentary by the History Channel called Crescent & the Cross. I was surprised that there was a really good selection of games available that covered that topic. For those of you who are wondering which game ended up buying, I ended up choosing to go with Infidel by GMT. So it’s funny, It has now gone full-circle. My interest in games led to an interest in history, my interest in history led to an interest in more history, and then my interest in more history led back to gaming. I must say, I think I’ll be stuck in this cycle for some time too, but I’m certainly not complaining as I am having a blast.
Regards,
James.
www.castellireviews.com
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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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I had the opportunity to play GMT’s new game Space Empires 4x yesterday. It’s a space themed game where players will eXplore space, eXpand their empires, eXploit resources, and attempt to eXterminate their opponent’s empires. I have likely mentioned this somewhere along the line but space themed games are not very appealing to me, I don’t hate the theme, I just find space themed games in general very hard to get excited about. You are reading a post by someone who still hasn’t seen all of the Star Wars movies.
I sat down to play a 2 player game of Space Empires with a good friend of mine using only the basic set of rules, there are some advanced rules that can be added in, although it is not recommended that you play with them until you grasp the basic game. The basic set of rules is not terribly complex, the basic rules are around 11 pages long and the rulebook is available as a download on GMT’s website. I’ll also note there is a very nice video here that I found useful to help learn the game.
Space Empire 4x has players each start with a very small "empire", as they explore space they will find planets to colonize giving them resources to buy new fleets, upgrade technologies, and essentially just eXpand their empires. Some areas in space are safer to explore than others, players have home regions that are relatively safe to explore, however the players are separated from one another by deep space hexes. Deep space is not as safe to explore. To explore a space hex of either kind you simply move a combat ship (or ships) into a hex and reveal the counter there. If it’s a planet, you can colonize it using a colony ship, if it’s a mineral token, you can pick it up using a Miner Ship and take it back to a colonized planet to get a resource bonus. There are also nebula and asteroid tokens that may be revealed; these mainly affect battles if they occur in that hex, there are things like black holes and danger tokens too; these can destroy ships exploring in that hex. Later on in the game a player may develop new ships that make exploring a much safer. The early turns of the game will see players spend some time exploring their surroundings, revealing planets and colonizing them, mining minerals, and just basically developing their technologies and building new ships. For the most part we did this part of the game simultaneously until such time as one of us broke out into deep space, so the earlier turns all went by quite quickly.
After three rounds of "play" players must do a maintenance phase, get your pens and paper ready here folks, perhaps even bring a calculator along. No, look, it is bookkeeping but it isn’t an overwhelming exercise, it flows nicely and there are some really interesting choices to make in this phase. The first thing you will do is determine how many resources your planets are developing and how many resources your Miner Ships have collected. Then you use these resources to pay maintenance costs on the ships you have on the board. You can then develop technologies, the technologies are things like upgrading the defense capabilities of future constructed ships, upgrading their attack capabilities, their speed etc. You may also develop a technology to get access to new model ships that have better abilities, and there are other technologies as well. Player’s can then buy new ships if they wish, keeping in mind of course they will have to pay maintenance costs for them in the next maintenance phase, the larger your fleet, the higher the maintenance costs will be and it can get a bit pricey.
After the Maintenance phase play then returns to the 4 X’s, eXploring, eXpanding, eXploiting and eXterminating. Once a player breaks through into the deep space hexes, it’s likely they are not coming over to your side to borrow a cup of sugar because the way you will win the game is by destroying your enemy’s home planet. When a home planet takes damage, the amount of resources it produces is decreased too. So it can really slow you down if an opponent is attacking your planets. Ship to Ship combat in the game is done with 10 sided dice (d’10’s) and it has some similarities to the Columbia Block games’ system in terms of ships initiative ratings being letters A,B,C etc, All A’s shoot before all B’s and all B’s before all C’s and so on. Player’s will roll the dice to attack their opponents attempting to roll under a target number to get a hit their opponent’s ships. The target number may be modified by a ship’s defenses and technologies. Anyway, I’ll stop there with the overview, I could go into more detail as there is obviously a lot more to the game. But I’d probably just confuse you, head over and check out that video or the rulebook to learn more about the game. That video is a really nice production.
So what did I think of the game? Well, as I mentioned I have only played this game once so keep that in mind, but I was left wanting to play it again. I can already see that the game has a lot of re-playability. The board’s set up each time would be different because the placement of the exploration tokens is random. There are also plenty of strategic options to eXplore, especially when it comes to the technologies and what to upgrade, and that’s all just the basic game too. The advanced game I have only briefly looked at but it adds a lot more ships which look like they would add even more depth to the game.
The resource management aspect I thought was really neat, knowing when to create a particular ship and in what quantity was very tough. Knowing what technologies to upgrade and when was equally as tough. There is also a fog of war which I like quite a bit in games, this means you won’t always know what your opponent has been developing, in most cases you learn all about what they have been developing when you interact with them, at which point it may really take you by surprise to learn that they have upgraded their attack technologies to a high level.
Deep space is interesting too, once the deep space has been broken through there is a real pressure to start acting either very defensively or aggressively towards your opponent. In our game there was little to no player interaction in the first 3 or 4 turns because we were just gathering resources and staying to our own sides of the board. But once a gap was made in deep space, IT WAS ON! I did feel with the battles that perhaps a d10 was to much die for this game, sometimes because of modifiers you may have to roll a 2 or less which is pretty hard to do on a D10. I say that now, but I think when I play this game again I would focus my strategy and technology upgrades a bit more aggressively. So, I doubt I’ll feel that way after my next game. The play time for my learning game was probably a little under 3 hours, (my opponent had played the game previously). I thought a little under 3 hours was reasonable for a learning game, I expect that with more players the playtime would be increased quite a bit though. I’m curious to try the game with 3 or 4 players, but would happily play it again with just 2. Just like many games out there, after reading the rules through I’d never have guessed the game plays like it does. It wasn’t better or worse than I thought it would be, just different. So far I haven’t put it on my must buy list, which is admittedly largely because I have a friend who owns a copy of it, but after more plays I may cave. I’ll be sure to report if and when that occurs.
Regards,
James.
www.castellireviews.com
Sat Nov 19, 2011 11:14 am
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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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When I first completed a review using the video format close to two years ago, I initially set out only to review one game - Little Italy by Dr. Reiner Knizia. The Little Italy video has since been deleted from the database, but this video’s reception from the board gaming community inspired me to complete some 40 more videos.
Later when I decided to upload videos regularly as part of a series of reviews, I had the goal of creating one; hopefully two videos a month that would assist the board gaming community in learning more about a game they may be interested in. It was my way of giving back to the community that I have gained so much from. Ever since January of 2010 I have kept to my schedule of monthly video contributions, unfortunately this will no longer be the case. I have decided that my videos will now be far less frequently produced, now to be clear I have no plans to end the show completely, I just plan on producing less videos. I do still hope to contribute to the community in other ways though.
I must thank all those who have watched, enjoyed, written comments or personal e-mails to me for all your support. I would never have even done a 2nd review if it wasn’t for the kindness and support of other gamers like yourselves, so thank you.
I currently have one video being worked on, it is however in its very early stages. Like my GMT video it will take a while to produce but I hope it is well received.
Thanks again.
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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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I recently took advantage of a special offer Artscow were having on custom drink coasters. Artscow.com is a website that allows you to upload your chosen images on a template to create a variety of products like; umbrellas and watches or custom playing cards and as I mentioned.....drink coasters.
The process is quite easy, I think anyone with even just a small amount of desktop publishing experience would find the process relatively intuitive. It is as easy as upload the image you want printed, align it on the template, order and pay.
With all that said what is the coaster quality like? The best way of explaining the material they use is that it is like that of a rubber swimming wetsuit. They are gripped rubber on the bottom to grip the table and have a material like surface. The coasters are about 2mm thick and measure around 9cm squared. The over all quality is very good, I was impressed. On a few of mine there is very slight fraying on the edges, to be perfectly honest it’s barely worth mentioning. There are two varieties you can create round or square, I had both made.
I uploaded a few board gaming related Images for my coasters, I had four round SPQR coasters made as I play a number of Roman themed games and I thought these would suit. I also had 8 others made, 5 of which had artwork by my favorite game artist; Piero. The remaining 2 were for my games of Twilight Struggle.
You may note one is missing, that was part of my fathers day gift to my father, not really relevant to this thread.
The print quality is good for the most part. I noticed the print quality of the images that were really high resolution to begin with far exceed the quality of those that were lower resolution images; I suppose this was to be expected. I’m not disappointed at all though, I feel they worked out well enough, but if/when I order more I would only upload high resolution images.
All in all for the 12 custom coasters delivered to Australia that cost me under $15.00 (aus), I will be a repeat customer. The next time Artscow are doing a special offer on coasters I plan on making a few "coaster players aids" for certain party games, I think that would be a great addition to my games colelction.
Regards,
James.
www.castellireviews.com
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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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I must apologize for the audio podcasts absence over May, I have been feeling a little under the weather of late and it has kept me away from the microphone. I hope to have a new episode out by late June or early July. In the meantime I'll write about one of the many games I've played recently, if you get time I have also produced a video review on a neat little card game called Biblios.
The game I have decided to write about today is Letters from Whitechapel. Letters from Whitechapel is a 2-6 player deduction game based on one of the worlds greatest unsolved mysteries; Jack the Ripper. Letters from Whitechapel takes a more historical approach to the theme than the other Jack the Ripper themed deduction game Mr. Jack. Letters from Whitechapel also has the murders taking place throughout the game, Mr. Jack is more or less solely about discovering the Identity of Jack and the chase to arrest him. This historical approach may be a turn off for some.
During a game of Letters from Whitechapel one player will take on the role of Jack the Ripper, his goal is to commit murders on each of 4 nights and return to his hideout without being apprehended by the investigators. The investigators will be the remaining players who are attempting to find and arrest Jack the Ripper.
The board depicts London's Whitechapel district and a lot of the locations are marked with numbers, Jack at the start of the game will pick a hideout by writing down one of these numbers on a supplied sheet of paper, his goal as I mentioned will be to return to that location each night. Jack starts the game by placing 8 tokens face down on the board that will indicate where his targets will eventually be placed, not all of these tokens will indicate real targets though, some are fake. The investigators then place 7 police tokens face down on the board, these are the locations where the police pawns will be placed, again some of these police tokens are fake. The idea of this is that the investigators won't have all the information they need as to where Jack's potential targets are. Jack also won't have all the information as to where the investigators will actually be. The next phase will reveal the 5 real targets to the investigators and the real target tokens are replaced by the target pawns. Jack then has the choice of killing one of the targets or waiting. If he waits he can reveal one police token to see if it is real or not, this gives Jack more information as to where the police will be located. Although by waiting, the police get to move the target pawns around the board, perhaps closer to police tokens. This process is repeated until Jack decides to Kill a target pawn. When Jack commits a murder he then replaces one target pawn with a crime scene token and the police pawns are placed in their spaces. The investigators know that Jack will be close to crime scene at this point and will flock to that area. As Jack moves around the board he notes each space down on the sheet of paper that he moved through. The investigators can move and ask for clues on their turn, they do this by asking if Jack has been to a space adjacent to their police pawn. If Jack has been there this night he marks that space on the board with a clue token. This is how the investigators will pick up Jack's trail and try to figure out in which direction his hideout is located. The investigators can trap Jack from getting to his hideout if they discover where it is, they can also make an arrest on a space if they know that it is Jack's current location. If Jack gets back to his hideout from the crime scene the turn ends and a new one begins, If he makes it back to his hideout after all of the 4 nights Jack wins, If not the Investigators win the game immediately.
Letters from Whitechapel I'm sure will be one of my favorite games of the entire year. I have a few video reviews being worked on currently but would like to review this one at some point. As much as I love this game I have encountered a number of things that I didn't like about it. I wanted to discuss those things as some of them I have not seen mentioned by others.
 The police and target tokens are tiny, fiddly little things. They can easily become camouflaged on the board. I think every time I've had to pick them up from the board I've said out loud "there is one more somewhere, where is it?". I'm in the process of making my own wooden tokens to replace these card tokens.
 The players aids supplied are colour coded to each of the players pawns, this is to keep track of which player is in control of which police pawn. The players aids themselves in my opinion are pretty much useless. They provide a minimal amount of information, we have the rulebook open at all times just to keep the game flowing. Not to refer to rules necessarily, but just to make sure each phase is followed correctly as each new turn there are a few changes.
 There are 4 turns in this game, each turn one player will become the head of the investigation. That player chooses the starting location for each investigator by the placement of the police tokens. There are 5 investigators though, so one player is guaranteed to miss out on becoming the head of investigation. That just felt a bit odd to me.
 The five investigator pawns are always used. In a game with only 4 players, 2 players will have to control 2 investigators each, one player will be left with only 1. This cannot be avoided, it again just felt odd.
 The box says it has a play time of 60+ minutes, I would not sit down to play this game unless I had a time slot of 150 minutes available. There is a possibly that it will end before that time if the investigators catch Jack early. Still, to play out all 4 turns it will likley take around 2 and a half hours.
 With multiple investigators I have encountered a number of issues. Downtime, dominant investigators who tell others what to do. In one case a player got out tokens from another game and placed them all over the board, each turn as the investigators received information the investigators would remove these tokens from the board. This sounds like a good idea, but it totally killed tense atmosphere the game can create.
With all that said why is it that Letters from Whitechapel might be my favorite game of 2011? Well let's do some deductions shall we, Issue numbers 3,4, 5 and 6 listed above are not much of an issue with only 2 players. Downtime is reduced, the player playing the investigator will always be the head of investigation, the investigator plays all 5 investigators and the play time will be slightly less, probably closer to 105 -120 minutes.
So as it stands, as a 2 player game my only real dislikes about Letters from Whitechapel are the players aids and the target/ police tokens. It is a truly tense deduction game where the theme has been incorporated into the gameplay very nicely. Several times when I've been Jack and my opponent is making deductions he'll say something like "you are on 48 aren't you?" I can never help but completely give my current location away as I have no control over a grin that goes from ear to ear. Even if he knows where I am now, unless he has the opportunity to make an arrest on that spot I can usually make an escape from there next turn, although probably with an investigator not far behind me. The artwork is fantastic and overall the game just creates a very tense atmosphere for both sides that I find myself wanting to come back too. The gruesome details of the Jack the Ripper murders have been left out of this game, the murders when they occur here are essentially just part of a set up phase, the meat of the game doesn't begin until after a "murder" has been committed. I can imagine some might still have an problem with the theme though. Anyway, that's some of my thoughts on Letters from Whitechapel, I'll try and get a full review done at some point over the next few months. If you are a fan of deduction games I would recommend having a closer look at Letters from Whitechapel.
From: www.castellireviews.com
Sun Jun 12, 2011 10:03 am
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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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Review copies are something I have seen discussed by reviewers on occasion but not often in a lot of detail. With this blog I hope to give the viewers of my show insight into my personal experiences with both playing games and reviewing games, today I’ll be discussing review copies.
It’s worth noting that review copies are something that for each reviewer will likely be different; my experiences might not reflect other reviewer’s experiences in any way shape or form.
When I began reviewing games the concept of getting a game for free for the purposes of a review was unknown to me. The "Review copy" was something I only learned of much later. It would be about a year after my first video was uploaded that I would get my first review copy, it would have been not long before that time that I started making inquiries about them to publishers. As you will soon learn getting review copies and making inquiries are two separate things.
When I first received a positive response to a request for a review copy it was exciting, more so for the fact that the game I was about to receive was, and still is in Australia hard to come by. The first issue I had to face was how to disclose this relevant information during the review without it taking up much time, or taking the focus away from the review itself. There was never really a question of whether I should disclose the information or not. I decided to flash a note at the beginning of the review saying *Review Copy, as opposed to saying it during the review or placing the note at the end of the review. I had become aware from numerous threads I had come across here on the geek, that disclosure was important to many and even legal in some circumstances. I’m not sure that video reviews fall into one of the legal circumstances or not, but I saw no harm in disclosing it anyway.
I can understand why people think that review copies may lead a reviewer to give a bias positive opinion; after all they are getting a game for free. However, if I uploaded a positive review of a game I disliked, instead of setting out to provide a service to the gaming community, I’d be doing the exact opposite by providing a disservice. It benefits no one by me stating I enjoy a game when in fact I don’t; I’m also not going to take the time to write a fictional review for the sakes of popularity or in hopes to get free games. If all I wanted were games I’d just spend the time that I spend on reviews, at work instead, the overtime would earn me enough to get me as many games as I desired.
The way I make an inquiry is in most cases by contacting the publisher about the possibility of a review copy of a particular title of theirs. It is just a short and polite email sent to them accompanied with a link to my latest review, website and a small write up of some statistics, such as where the majority of my viewers are from, number of views etc. (I will in another post, show you guys these statistics, as some of the statistics are probably not what you’d expect). I never expect a company to provide review copies either. It’s great if they do, but I completely understand that they may have other existing relationships with reviewers or it may just not be of interest to them.
Over the past year or so I have written to a number of publishers about review copies and it is easy to become discouraged, the most common response I have had is no response at all. I have also had some that cannot for several reasons send goods to Australia, some that politely reply that it’s not something they do, and in one circumstance the reply was and I quote, "(insert companies name here) likes to give out review copies of games to serious reviewers". I’m not sure if I should have taken offense to that response or not, I'll admit I did, but replied politely and I still look forward to playing their game if I get the chance too. There have been several times I have inquired about review copies and my request has been denied and I still have ended up purchasing the game I inquired about.
I do not have a relationship with a company where I receive games that I have no personal interest in. Nothing shows up on my doorstep that I am unaware of, or that I am not excited about getting to the table. All the games I have received to this date were games that I had researched and had thought that both my group and I would enjoy playing. I’d like to keep it that way too. Out of the 5 review copies I have received, 4 have been at my request, 1 of which I had already done a written review on, another was a prototype for www.kickstarter.com in which I ended up pre-ordering it anyway. In only 1 rare occasion a publisher approached me with a game that I liked the look of and I was obviously happy to accept. I have refused a review copy of a game that was offered to me because I had no interest in it after researching it. The Bottom line is, if I am sent review copies of games that I "have" to play, not "want" to play, I’ll be pushing the boundary of this becoming work. Work is something I "have" to do, not "want" to do. You can tell how much I love my job .
I ask this question to the readers of this post, I am about to receive a couple of games from an overseas publisher, they were not free review copies though, I did have to pay some money, although admittedly they were discounted for review purposes. Taking into consideration I did pay something for them, are they still review copies? or should I put a note *discounted copy. It makes little difference to me, but it might make a difference to others.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, any questions or comments are always welcome.
Regards,
James.
www.castellireviews.com
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JAMES CASTELLI
Australia
Hornsby
N.S.W
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This entry is taken from www.castellireviews.com . I thought it might make an interesting first blog entry for my new BGG blog.
I'm one of those people who enjoy learning about what happens behind the scenes of either music productions or films. I know that there are others out there that also take an interest in behind the scenes activity, so I thought today I'd give you a sneak peak into the world of Castelli Reviews. I did consider doing a video on the subject but I think I'll leave my youtube channel more or less exclusively for reviews.
My "studio"
Above is my current set up, where I record the audio podcast and youtube videos. I have two computers neither of them are by today's standards very good. The one on the right was a recent addition due to my old one on the left crashing often during video productions. My old computer is the only one with the program I use to make the pictures for the animations, my new one is the only one with the capability to handle the video editing software I now use, so both computers are unfortunately needed. Both computers are linked to the one monitor, I have a switch that can select which PC to display on the monitor. It's worth mentioning that up until my review of London I used Windows Movie Maker as my video editor, a program that comes with Windows and it is actually quite good.
When I was younger I did quite a bit of audio engineering, mostly on my own projects, some for others and even some for local radio stations. When it came to setting up the audio equipment I was right at home. The Mixer on the right is used simply as a way of having external control of the volumes going into the computer which records the content, it is also occasionally used for compression. In my earlier reviews I did not have access to the equipment pictured here. I have been doing video reviews for over a year now and during that time I have used several different mixers and microphones. My first reviews were all filmed on a still shot camera.
One of my old mixers and an old microphone.
The microphone stand I only purchased a week ago and it makes it more comfortable for me to sit for long periods of time when recording audio. I use a tie clip microphone when I am on camera and the microphone pictured above is for the overview voice overs and for the podcast. That microphone is nothing special, actually it's pretty bad it's the mixer maximizes it's potential.
The scanner on the left along with a standard still shot camera is the equipment used to capture the images used for the animations, which I later edit. The Lamp is used to help with lighting for the videos, I usually have two of them but one has a blown globe at the moment.
The actual video portion of my reviews is filmed using a Logitech c600 webcam. I am looking into (HD) handheld cameras at the moment, although given their expense it seems like something that is not really worthwhile. That money in my opinion could be better spent on games, I like reviewing games but I like playing them more.
Now that you have an Idea of what I use to make a video, I'll tell you briefly how I use the equipment. First things first, I spend hours upon hours writing the overview and taking notes on my thoughts until I feel it is coherent. I'll admit the amount of time it takes me is largely due to the fact I struggle with writing, I'm sure most would be able to do better job and in much less time. I then I record the overview's voice over. I really have to focus on this because I have to picture in my head what the animated segment will look like ahead of time, when I say for example "So, Hannibal here will be dealt 5 battle cards for his combat units..." I will have to work that into the animation later. Several times I have started animating something only to realize a part of the audio cannot coincide with the visual layout I have set up previously. At which point I have to start the animation all over again.
After recording the voice over I start the animation. This is by far the most time consuming, I do not use a program to "make" the animation as such, they are a series of JPEG images, every time something moves on the screen it is an entirely separate image. A video review can contain up to 160 images. I use a standard publication program to lay out the images as I listen to the audio overview, If it says . . . I arrange the images to coincide with . . . I then save the image as a Jpeg, play the rest of the audio, rinse and repeat.
Screen shot of Hannibal's animation in progress.
Then using the original recording which I record in the editing software used for the videos I arrange the images to link up with the audio. SO when I say "Hannibal receives 5 battle cards for his CU's" I drag and drop that image over the audio.
The voice over audio track is the purple track, the track two lines above it is the series of JPEG's. Each individual black line separating a track is an edit, as you can see alone for the audio track there are a lot of them.
This is why I'd like to get a high definition camera, because I could film what I'd normally animate making reviews much quicker to complete. Still, I think my reviews might then lose their flavor. I'll keep an eye out for one though but I am in no rush.
The Sony program I use now to edit the reviews can do some amazing things and is quite easy for me to use, but for me it was all very intuitive, I have done audio work on the Sony program's predecessors in the past. Windows Movie Maker did what I needed it too and I think it did a good job, the Sony one just makes it easier for me.
Anyway that is a very, very brief behind the scenes look of the podcast and my videos. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you have time check out my video review ofHannibal: Rome vs Carthage and my pictorial reviews of Genesis and Dixit.
Regards,
Jimmy.
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