Donald Fergus
Donald’s talent and skill shine through in ADi’s character animation bringing quality and life to our work. His life-long ambition to make beautiful character animation has put him on track to making a name for himself in the global animation industry.
Donald’s latest Journal entries…
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October 23 2012
Music Videos are Right Around the Corner
I worked with Jim Blashfield on a music video for Weird Al Yankovic right out of college. It was a great opportunity, really taught me the ropes of working in the “biz” for a director. We made a music video for a song called “Pancreas” on a compilation disc Weird Al put out a while ago. It was an interesting experiment, a disc with a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. Six music videos produced by famous animation directors from the annals of animation history. Jim…
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July 11 2012
Made a Board Game…
One night, my friend and I were at the bar having dinner after a long session of Diablo 3. We were talking about mini games for our Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and within half an hour I had a fantastically simple yet complex game designed and ready to test. That night, after the bar, I built a rough board in Photoshop and we played eleven games in two hours with the Photoshop file, as I have no printer. We couldn’t stop ourselves. The design had just enough randomness to make…
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June 4 2012
Animation: Arts or Crafts?
Animation is an art form. The interplay between motion and form, color and light, sound and voice all form a story the audience gets to appreciate on a personal level. They can feel a part of themselves in the hero, see people they know in the supporting cast and suspend their disbelief farther than nearly any other medium outside of video games. Animation suffuses so many mediums. Film, television, video games, web design, user interfaces, even fine art are all venues for the animators art. An artist thrives when bringing…
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April 10 2012
Game Balance
Game Balance Recently I have been working on some game design for a two player fighting game. The first rule of these sorts of games is to maintain a proper balance. In games, balance is a term used to encompass a handful of ideas, such as fairness and difficulty. Balance in games is not strictly for video games, but card games, table top role playing games, board games and even sports. When one is challenged with designing a game of some sort, balance must be in the front of the designers…
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February 7 2012
The Joys of Dungeon Mastering
The Joys of Dungeon Mastering: I have just picked up the reigns of mine and my friends long running Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Thanks to Skyrim coming out while I was planning for this adventure, my story is all about dragons taking over the world. Oddly enough, in our three years of adventuring, we’ve never actually faced off against a dragon. I decided to flip that around and turn dragons from the ultimate end boss of the storyline to the most prominent and visible creatures in the game world. First night…
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