New Vlog and update on thesis!

Hello! Well I have a few new exciting things to share.

1. Remember that mic I talked about? Well, I recorded some test lines for Taluun, played around with some filters, and I think I have a good sounding voice for him. Soon, I'll be recording all of his lines and making some animations based around them to get a general feel for the character and also working kinks out of the Unreal 3 pipeline so that later down the road, there isn't a problem.

2. I also played around with Taluun and made some progress on his model, however, I won't upload any more pictures until he is completely finished. I also made some adjustments to Elia and hopefully by next week I can upload some update photos on her.

and finally:

3. To keep myself from burning out on my thesis and to motivate my art skills, I decided to start a Vlog called "1000 Bad Drawings" with the concept that every artist has a 1000 bad drawings out and practice makes perfect. Essentially, its just a digital sketchbook, but why not make it interesting?

Anyways, here's my first video and I'll be uploading daily (yes, daily). I am terrible with keeping up with these kinds of things...so let's hope this goes well. I will have to push myself harder than ever before.

Enjoy! And until next time...keep updated on my new youtube Vlog!

Getting it together

So, it's been a bit of a slow week as far as work is concerned, what with it being my birthday and all, but I have been getting some things together and doing some 2D work.

I went into Photoshop and quickly whipped up some squares for story boarding which I will be using to get a general idea of how the scenes look and composed. So far I have 2 pages which isn't really much but like I said, it's slow going. Once I get the storyboard done, I will be scanning it and will post it.

I also recently purchased a microphone for recording dialogue. So far I really like it for the price range. $70 Samson Meteor Mic with USB. I will be playing around with different audio software to see what I can do for voices and synths for the previously mentioned character: Taluun.

I am very excited to continue working on this and I hope to get Taluun finished in the next week or so (high poly I mean) and can start recording lines. Oh, the fun will begin when I start rigging. I may hold off on that or flop back and forth between Elia and rigs in order to not get bogged down and bored of the single project. I tend to find that working many hours on the same thing as tedious and can make mistakes doing so from looking at the same thing.

Anyways, I'll be posting hopefully some good stuff next week!

Until next time!

It's the final stretch...

Not of life or something like that. If anything, it's the beginning of my life. And what better way to start it off than with an overly ambitious thesis that I will lose many months of sleep over!

Remember the girl from the previous post? (If you're on the feed just scroll down literally one post. I don't update this thing much). Well she will be the star of said thesis, though I plan to rework her as she has many flaws (and too large of breasts).

But anyways, I will explain my thesis as concisely as possible. If you want to skip the rambling and just see cool pictures then I don't blame you. Scroll past all of this until you see the out of context scary-looking guy. Otherwise, keep reading.

The thesis will revolve around showcasing the skills I know and have obtained at my time at Mount Ida College. Hopefully, I will be successful in the character art, environment art, rigging, and animation all using the Unreal 3 Engine, Maya, and Zbrush. The idea is to make a game ready real time cut scene using the characters to premise a boss fight. As I was told by my advisor (and wisely so) to NOT make a 15 minute epic, I can't help but agree. I hope to knock out most of the character art and some rigging by the end of the summer so that I may dedicate more of my time to the rigging and animation as well as putting together the scenes and storyboarding and yadda yadda the list goes on, and it is quite daunting.

Anyways: Lore!

The following is a character by the name of Taluun. He is a god of the sky, grand architect, and overall asshole. He will be the boss our protagonist, Elia, fights. Quick back-story is that he was created to guard the people of this city in the sky which he built himself (no, it isn't Columbia or Cloud City because it doesn't float.) There were two other gods which were also sent to guard other regions, one of them being a love interest to Taluun. They both were jealous of the power of the shark god so they went to his realm together, tried to fight him, and lost miserably. They decided to take a different course of action and went to the source of their creation, powerful mystical crystals, with the reasoning that if it had the power to create them, then it could easily make them stronger. Adrianna, the other god, absorbed a few crystals and became horribly deformed. Taluun reasoned that this was so because she had not sacrificed anything to allow the crystals to enter and that's why it had adverse effects. Taluun then, as anyone would do, cut off his own head and infused the crystals with the now gaping hole and created a new head for himself. He found himself incredibly powerful and did not see himself as horribly deformed like Adrianna. They then went their separate ways and things happen that aren't really important to what I'm about to show you.

Basically, dude cuts off his own head.

So this is all I really have so far. I've been working on him off and on among other things so that's been keeping me busy. I'm going to start scheduling myself and make deadlines so that I can start focusing on other things now such as storyboarding and audio. Until next time! Enjoy. 

"That's a woman?" --Danny DeVito

     So what have I been doing lately? Last time I posted I mentioned something about working on a Bionicle Mod, which the work somewhat fell through for preferably undisclosed reasons. However, I've been keeping myself busy with other projects galore so that I am not idling.

      So, in Game Art, what am I most afraid of? Well of course, the only thing there is to be terrified of; Human Anatomy. Not only that, but female human anatomy. I don't know why, but something about the female face is difficult for an inexperienced sculptor. So naturally I wanted to tackle the process and hopefully overcome my fear. It was difficult at first because I fell into the "it's stylized" trap and didn't want to budge on my style. However, I soon realized that even the smallest differences can make a style pushed to drastic measures. Where I stand right now, I'm pretty satisfied with my result, but have to continue to finish the character, retopo, and texture her. This is what I've got so far.

      Yeah, I've got some things to work on, but I really wanted to add her to the spring show so I rendered a quick image of her head to submit. So far I think she's heading in the right direction but is by no means finished.

On the other hand, I've been working on some other sculpts that aren't my own design. Nicholas Kole is one such artist that I worked on a concept of his and was honored to actually have his critique. He's quite a genuine guy and gave me a lot of tips, at least with working on stuff in Amalur style. Here's the original concept and my sculpt by comparison.

School is coming to a close and that means summer (which also means more time to work). Hopefully I can get this girl finished and work on some other cool projects.

Whoah, where have I been?

Ok, so wow, it's been busy. I got to a point where I was working on a ton of games and never finished my environment, yadda yadda.

So now I have a game in the making, working on the Polycount Escape Contest, and I was asked by a modding team to do my dream job...make Bionicles!

That's right, my Bionicle project from last summer paid off and now I'm working on a Skyrim mod with Bionicle characters and environments. And the fact that I'm working with a team really kicks me in high gear. So where do I start? Aside from continuing on working on Po-Koro, I've decided that Le-Koro is the next village that I tackle. So what does this mean? Of course watching MNOLG videos on Youtube (yay)!

I think that the transition from Le-Wahi/Onu-Koro tunnels to Le-Koro is a good place to start, so that means tons of rocks and trees. Woop.

To get me started on the project, here's a little mood board of Le-Koro/Le-Wahi

Can't wait to get started!

Block out has begun

I've started on my blockout of the environment, and I immediately noticed that this would be a quite difficult project simply because the concept only has the silhouette and well developed color, but leaves the fine detail to the imagination. This, however, makes me very excited because its just enough to keep me on the right track, while also leaving me to my imagination. 

I decided the best place to start was in the foreground with the mysterious and seemingly useless traffic light. Considering the area is somewhat overgrown and serves more as a walking area, I decided to further incorporate the whole sky-train idea into this piece. I decided that the only way a sky train would be practical would be if it remained in the air on a set path rather than flying around wherever it pleases. In order to get up to the sky-train you'd be required to take this elevator up to a walkway and board the train from there. 

The style of the elevator is mostly inspired by Chinese maintenance elevators. I incorporated a grid onto the sides with square holes and an aesthetic, yet functional design.  

Instead of having a door that lifts up though, I decided to make something more pedestrian friendly and have just a lift hatch. The ceiling piece at the very top is from the rest of the scene where you see those scattered all about the scene. With this as a part of the elevator, I figure it would serve as a marking for a walkway area with stops intermittently about the city. 

This is pretty much all I've worked on, but I have been planning how I want to make this and I want to try and make the whole thing procedural, using only normal maps and specular maps. I think it may just work, and I'm excited to begin that process. However, until then, I'll have to finish the block out with the exception of the actual train, which I will have to spend a lot of time trying to flesh out. 

Hope you enjoy and keep a look out for more progress. 

Finals, and now another new project?

Well, Finals are here and I've updated my blog almost none. If you want to see what I've worked on then check out my website. I've also become somewhat proficient at rigging and marginally decent at animating. I think, however, it's safe to say I want to do Environment Art. For the longest time I flipped back and forth between what I want to do, whether it be environment art or character art but now that I've decided, I think it's time for me to heavily focus on my skills. My work is always rushed to some extent and as a student I feel like that is good, but only for a bit. I shouldn't be lazy about my work, but I shouldn't go full force on working on projects either. I think what I'll do, after finals of course, it start on one large personal project to work on amid my school work. It'll be my go to peaceful time away from the hectic schoolwork. The concept I'll be working from is this:

This is "Sky Train" by Kinman Chan.If you want to see more of his work, here it is. I can't wait to start on this piece, and if I've learned anything from my previous project, its that block outs and time management is key. 

I'll try and keep you updated!