krenigma wrote:This is Krenigma, from the Knight Rider VFX team.
Welcome!
Good to see you looking in on the threads.
krenigma wrote:As one of the people who designed the current Vox, so far we've gotten quite a good reaction to it, but I totally understand your concerns. We made sure to include the bars as a tribute to the original Vox, but when designing an element like that we tried to balance the wishes of fans and making something new and different for the new generation. In fact, the whole show is like that, hopefully balancing the two.
And you folks done that so well. In other threads we were just discussing some of the things we found familiar in the new show. There's a LOT there that is VERY Knight Rider. Loved it!
I think it's great you're trying to please everyone. And you did good. But I think in trying to please everyone, it sometimes reminds me of the saying "Too many cooks spoil the pot." I'm not saying the vox is bad. Obviously people do like it. I personally am not crazy about it. But that's just my opinion. In trying to please everyone you have to sometimes put your foot down and say "ok, this is finished, even if we left some things out."
I just thought from my viewpoint (and was also wondering if others thought the same) that it was too busy. Also was wondering what folks liked about it so maybe I could see things that I might have missed after 3 viewings (I probably will view it several times more. That's how much I really liked the show overall!
)
krenigma wrote:I like to think the blue data disappearing into the ether is Kitt's processor accessing and downloading countless amounts of data, the new KITT needs to be so much faster and access so much more than the old and we needed to show that. It has to be complex without looking too busy... the whole graphic had to feel purposeful and intelligent.
I'm sorry to say that I totally missed that. It was after Neil posted the image (thank you Neil
) that I see what you're talking about. To me, it looked like distorted moving fractal graphics and made everything else (particularly the 3-bar vox) hard to view. When the action is going so fast and things are not shown on the screen for only seconds at a time, I tend to miss a lot of things. Some people are far more observant than I am, I'm sure. To me, I just see a conglomeration of things on the screen and it sometimes confuses me. I have to confess, that is a flaw of mine. I have a hard time with fast action so my mind seems to have compensated by just taking in the gist of things and eliminating a lot of detail. I just need someone to point things out to me sometimes or I miss stuff.
I think the data thing, plus eye, plus vox bars, plus sine wave lines is a bit too much. The matrix data thing probably would be nice on the HUD instead, while he's calling up data or storing it for later.
krenigma wrote:What'd you think of the way KITT uses his eye to scan the documents on the seat?
That was his 'eye' that did that? Dangit, I missed that too.
I thought the beam came from 'somewhere' but didn't catch exactly where. Also I was left thinking (being a computer programmer, that gives me the bad habit of over-analyzing some things
) 'how can a computer scan a document under the pages'? I thought he wasn't going to get far just looking at the top cover. But just as I type this, I just remembered how they are using computers to scan and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls *through the layers*. So it would suffice that KITT would be able to do the same thing, even better since he'd be higher technology. So the logistics is a good one.
I loved it that he 'thought' to look at the document after the conversation. It was a nice effect, showing that KITT was curious of what the contents of the file was, and that he was not just looking but possibly storing the information. Much better effect than, say, showing the document on the seat and playing some kind of music as if something is happening, etc. So yeah, I liked that part. Worked quite well in the scene. And the scan lines were great - reminds you of an actual scanner (instead of thin laser lines for example, which work better in other areas).
krenigma wrote:To fuzziedice and anyone else, feel free to post your own designs for the Vox, it'd be fun for us to see other ideas!
I hope you won't mind I grabbed the image from Neil's post.
I may play around with it maybe this weekend. I still would like to see how my faux scanner idea would work out (with animation and all). I might do it and decide "na, that wasn't such a great idea". But then again I don't know. I'll try some stuff out. I am just curious what some of my own ideas really would look like, is all.
Of course if you and the crew think things are good as they are and you like the feedback it's getting, then of course you know you don't need to change anything or change what you like. Like I said, you can't please everyone.
I will be happy no matter what you do. Even if I do miss a few things or things seem a bit off to me. It's a great show and it's entertaining.
Keep up the great work!
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As for the lines, the thin line in the back is actually what the VFX guys had in their version. I superimposed their version under mine. So mine I just warped the line in the animation frames to give it a bit of a curve.
