Behind the Scenes in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s “The Lab” (Part 1: Animation)
Ten years ago, Rockstar Games put together some tech demos to be displayed at London's Design Museum, detailing aspects of development on
GTA Vice City. These demos haven't been available to the public since the museum exhibit, and for Vice City's 10th anniversary, Rockstar is re-releasing them online. You can check out the first one, Animation,
at this link. Vice City was always my favorite GTA by a long shot, I like it even better than Chinatown Wars. I know I'm in the minority here but I think the gritty, emo direction Rockstar took with GTA4 drummed a lot of the crazy magic out of GTA. It's nice to know we'll always have Vice City.
Nearly ten years ago, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was honored by London’s Design Museum as an annual design award nominee recognizing the ‘biggest contribution to design in 2002’ alongside such other newfangled technology as Apple’s iPod. Part of the award festivities included a special installation at the museum for which Rockstar produced an exclusive set of interactive kiosks to give visitors a glimpse of how Vice City was created – specifically focused on the game’s Animation, Sound, and City Design architecture. In honor of Vice City's 10th anniversary and release for Android and iOS, the Rockstar Newswire will be publishing the entire three-part series of original files not seen since the original museum exhibition, starting with today’s Animation chapter, featuring:
“Motion Capture”- a rare video showing a cutscene between Kent Paul and Tommy Vercetti going from motion-capture through to 3D model wireframe to finished product.
“Sketch Book” - a progression of original character sketches through to final models and now-iconic illustrations of such folks as Lance Vance, Avery Carrington, Ken Rosenberg and more.
“Tommy Moves”- a set of clips showing the genesis of Tommy’s animations whether jumping into a Comet sportscar, dive-kicking a biker off his chopper or running with a chainsaw...
