Year 2 - Week 12 - January 16th - 20th

This week started off with life drawing, which is something I didn’t talk about last week so I want to talk about it a little. I’ve not done any life drawing since last year so I’m a bit rusty on it. Things I learnt last year were using the hand eye coordination technique were the hand naturally follows the eye, this really helped me gain a much quicker and accurate outcome of the human figure, normally in the past the way I use to draw was by pure judgement of how I see and what I think I saw things, which most times out of ten (I would say) would be inaccurate. I never really used the technique of extending the arm out and measuring with a pencil either much, but that really helped me to. It’s amazing in how I’ve improved in a short amount of time.

I’ve again been continuing with these techniques, primarily however using the hand eye technique for short poses and pencil measurements with longer poses. One thing that throws me off producing contour work is having to remember pushing soft and hard with a pencil for lighter and darker areas of the body. I’m struggling to do it all at once. When I’m drawing still life however I tend to get it right, but this is based on the fact that I have the time to think about it, I don’t work fast, only if I’m required to. I can’t work at a speedy pace; I need the time to work things out accurately as I strive to be ‘perfect’, but ‘perfect’ is really impossible to achieve with anything.  I think over time for now things will come along much better.

Accuracy?

We looked at logo designing and coming up with a presentable background to put our work on in a portfolio. Now personally I don’t want to be a Game Artist (or at least not anymore) though I still think it’s going to be good to have a strong portfolio. I’ve already talked about composition so I’m not going to ramble on about that anymore but basically it’s important to make sure the viewer sees what’s going on in the image, not have a focal point smack bang in the centre of an image, and make sure the scene isn’t mostly empty.

Nice simple design?

Coming back to logos I find that it’s important to have a logo that incorporates something about yourself.

Game D-Pad controller (black), my initials (red).

You want it to be eye catching I think, so bright colours, bold font are generally good for something that people could recognise you by (I’d say). It’s like any company logo, for instance McDonalds logo, you know what it is just by looking at it, it doesn’t even have to read ‘McDonalds’ for you to know what it is, so something that stands out it always good.

The group project is coming along slowly but surely, we’re still in the concepting phase, however I’ve decided to post different entries about that separately from now on.

Year 2 - Week 11 - January 9th 2012 - 13th

This week counts as a part of the last semester, so there’s not really too much to say. Over the Christmas break I had drawn myself for our self portrait project. I said at the start of the year I wanted to get better at drawing the human figure, I spent quite a bit of time on my portrait but I thought it turned out really well, maybe the best piece of work I’ve ever produced.

Me.

Looking at skin tones and colours I layered over and over using the peachy/orangey and red colours of my face. Instead of using black and white to make things look darker and brighter, I’m well into the habit of using darker tones of colours to bring out the darker and lighter areas. I used this to create pixel density to the image, especially on the nose, hair and eyes in particular. I used this project opportunity to eliminate all defects on my face just before I say it can be improved because there are details on my face that I know are there but didn’t want to add them in. Overall I’m really happy with the outcome.

Group project teams have been announced this week. A lot of the overall level design seems to have been decided upon already. The idea of having a huge tree in the middle seems like a cool idea but I don’t want anything to do with it… I just cannot stand trees. I had totally different ideas about the project; a lot was decided without me and I want to be either a game designer or level designer but the problem is I don’t want to cause arguments and have the group fall apart, so I’m just trying to take in on the chin with whatever is suggested but it would have been nice to have taken a lead role possibly and have more of my own ideas taken into account (though there is still time as its early days, I’m not complaining). So far actually I’ve put together a few images of what the final thing could look like. We’ve so far painted over some of the photos we’ve taken to get some ideas flowing and to help generate more.

So far we’ve made an overhead view of the building plans and put together a plan of starting the level and ending the level, we’ve also one some white boxing for a more clearer view on how we should go about modelling certain things. I’ve also compiled an asset list. Communication is important within this project so we’ve set up groups on FaceBook and another blog specifically for the project.

This for me is the main event of the course or the ‘golden age’ if you like; this is the one thing I’ve been looking forward to the most since I first heard about it, it’s really exciting but its going to be a lot of hard work, can’t wait to get going properly next week.

Had to cut this down from 938 triangles.

Gaming in 2011

Last year I talked about gaming in 2010 and about gaming some games and consoles of that year and what we would be seeing the following year, so as we have just ended 2011 I think I’ll write a bit about my thoughts on gaming in 2011 and what this New Year will bring us.

In 2010 I remember saying that we there weren’t really any consoles to talk about that were released that year however at that years E3 convention in America we saw the Nintendo 3DS announced. As amazing as it looked, the 2 questions that everyone wants to be answered immediately are: How much is it going to be? And when will it be released? We all know for a fact that with it being a Nintendo console it is most likely that Japan will get it first. Sometimes America does get the release first as in recent years I’ve known that to happen with the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS but it’s the most likely outcome. As predicted it was but only by a month. Being the only console released this year it the main thing to talk about.

Things are going in the 3D direction and with this being the first 3D console it opens up quite a lot of possibilities for the future. It’s just a matter of time until a 3D home console is made, however on that note, you’ll probably need a 3D TV to go with it thus making it all too expensive, so maybe when all the hype on 3D has died down a bit we may have a 3D home console but I’m talking way in the future. It’s incredible what Nintendo seem to achieve, every time the design a new console they add a new feature to it which amazes everyone but revolutionises the way we play, take the Nintendo DS for example, we could then play games by touching a screen, Nintendo Wii: we can play with touch and move sensitive controls not to mention you can blow and speak into the mic of the Nintendo DS for some games. Game play has totally changed, we’ve seen Sony do the same and Microsoft with their ‘PlayStation Move’ and ‘Kinect’ add-ons, though I feel they are playing catching with that, though the Kinect proves you don’t even need a controller anymore to play a game.

We've seen some magnificent visuals in some for the 3DS titles and the fact that you don't need glasses to see screen proves that we could design a TV the same way? However I don't think it's possible to turn a normal television set 3D through connecting a console?

So they’ve figured out how to play games differently (eliminating the controller) and boosted the graphics making them 3D and what not, so what’s next? It feels that we just can’t get any better now? At E3 2011, they revealed the highly anticipated Wii U console, the sequel to the Wii in which it basically does more than the Wii Watching one the preview trailers however, it amazed everyone (as Nintendo always do).

Now we’ve got a touch screen in front of us to play our games, it’s also the first Nintendo console to be HD (playing catch up?) and if you don’t need the TV you can play your Wii U games on the controller portably… my first thoughts we’re: ‘Oh My God!’ what amazes me is how it’s all done (I’m assuming) wirelessly. The game can transfer from your console to your controller so you can keep playing it while on the move? If that’s true, it’s just amazing! The controller can be used as a touch screen, but my question is: is the handheld controller screen HD?

PSVita 2011/12

Sony and Nintendo will go head to head by the looks of it this year as both are bringing out consoles. Sony’s PSVita is on the way soon, what makes it good is how Sony are changing the way we play (for once!) by introducing a touch screen on the front but also the back of the console. It’s another touch screen but with a slight twist which is cool but also Sony has released the first HD handheld console with graphics to that of the PS3/Xbox 360 status. There are many games to be released this year and it’ll be interesting to see how Sony and Nintendo do in comparison, but where does this leave Microsoft with their Xbox? Well maybe we’ll see something at E3 come June, one thing I come back to think about a lot is how Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is coming up to its 10 year anniversary pretty shortly (in 2015), they haven’t produced a console since 2005, are they working on something big? I always thought they’d make a handheld Xbox, though a lot of fans for a few years now have had all this hype on the speculation of ‘Xbox 720’ (just because it’s double 360). I can’t say but maybe we’ll see something soon…

?

As a conclusion, it feels like we’re living the bottle neck of gaming, we’re answering questions all the time as each year goes on but how greater can we get? As I ponder this thought the developers are coming up with new ways to play games. What’s next? PS4?  And Xbox Handheld? I think this year will be a big year that will answer many questions in gaming though there are tons more to answer.

Year 2 - Week 10 - December 5th - 9th

Oh dear... oh dear... the reason for not having a third ‘oh dear’ is because our blogs were not marked, so if you’re not in for hearing a huge rant from me please leave this blog now!

You maybe have guessed it; I did worse than my realistic prediction on the assessment. Yet again the harsh reality as I like to call it has slapped me in the face, not only that but it has kicked me while I’m down again to.

To start off, Game Production... well I said in my last entry that wasn’t hoping for a really good grade due to the lack of personal work which would let me down. There’s a million and one things wrong with my treasure chest and trash projects.  It’s all pretty much down to detail with the geometry and the specular and normal maps and the finished outcomes not resembling the references. I guess in that sense we really don’t have any leeway in Imagineering in our work, which I thought we could do. One thing that sticks out is how in my design document I have apparently said I thought that both the treasure chest and trash projects were challenging and difficult. I remember saying that I thought maybe the legs to the treasure COULD have been challenging as I have no experience in using the pelt mapping modifier in max and I thought it COULD have been difficult...

 As for the trash box project I said that this project seems a little too easy, because we’re basically just modelling boxes, I mean what’s so difficult about that? I said that I wanted to ADD a bit of COMPLEXITY to the project because it just seems too easy... in which I went about it by doing things like not making the bin square, by not just modelling a box, make it so it’s bending and worn etc but that’s the only thing I could think of to be honest. My shapes are ‘rudimentary and crude’ well okay I just wanted to get the models done without using unnecessary triangles, isn’t the whole point to be as low poly as you can get? Basically I need to just add more detail, my overall mark was 35 which is the exact score I got last year and failed the module, I’m not far off though to say I knew I wasn’t going to get a really good grade.

Visual design... well as I’ve been saying I’m finding the time to do extra but what pisses me off is that the personal work that I’ve done was NOT taken into account at the assessment. I failed because I haven’t completed all the work given to us, I know that but it would have been nice if maybe my work could have been looked at and not just scanned through briefly. Again like the previous assessment I’ve been told that I’ve improved and again done a lot MORE yet my grade remains the same. What pisses me off even more is the fact that it’s NOT marked properly...

A brief scan through our work and line drawn the middle of the inadequate box. The same old story as last time. I’m not down about it though; I actually smiled when I saw it, I’m use to it...

I mean thing is, okay so I’m inadequate even though I’ve given it a 110%, but it’s the fact that how on a brief scan of my work can you assume my research, technical skill, artistic judgement and my engagement and attendance are inadequate to? What to me is a CLEAR OUTSTANDING example or poor marking is the fact my attendance is inadequate, even though I’ve NOT missed a SINGLE class... 

Okay so maybe it’s based on half attendance and half engagement, but if by what it says is based on that then I know for a fact it’s a complete lie. So maybe don’t like to engage with other during class, I’ve always been that way, and who says you have to have engagement, it’s my life and my life choice, if I don’t want to then why should that effect my education? The point is if it’s based half on engagement and half attendance then I should be at ATLEAST a good on the feedback sheet? 

I don’t what specifically sure what is meant my relevance , and I don’t know about technical skill or what others think of my Artistic judgement but attendance FOR SURE SHOULD be at least better than inadequate.

The one thing that REALLY confused me and pissed me off was that the first thing I was told in my visual design review was, and I quote ‘I know you’re struggling’................................

Who said that they know I’m struggling? I’m not struggling at all... I don’t feel like I am and have never said OR felt like I am this whole first semester... I don’t honestly know where that’s come from at all... It is if anything a FALSE assumption of me and as if it’s made to make me feel worse about the work I’m producing? Not to name any names but one of my close friends was also told the same thing? Where is this struggling thing come from all of a sudden? NOT only that but to be told that visual design is NOT my strongest part of the course and then give me a bad grade? It’s as if they were trying to make me feel depressed...

I did NOT pay all this money to come to University for people to sit there and make FASLE assumptions of me and tell me my attendance and even my work relevance is ‘inadequate’ when I know that it’s NOT. I came to get a degree and to hopefully one day achieve the dream job I’d like, like everyone else. It’s out of order.

Coming back to the task where we were asked on how to improve the course, well it’s a fantastic course but the inaccurate marking of the work is what let’s it down in my opinion.

Semester 1 Thoughts

The dreaded assessments are coming up shortly so I thought I’d take the time to write up some of my thoughts on the work I have done so far. Going back to week 1 at Abbey Park, we were taught about how you can use colour swabs to create images.

My final piece I thought turned out well thought there are ways in which I could have improved it. I used a limited colour palette for it, it was amazing to see what I managed to create out of those colours alone. I would say the bushes in the background are maybe not that fitting as I have trouble with rendering trees and foliage. I spent a lot of time on it as I have found I spend a lot more time when I work digitally.

My Loughbrough final took way too long to finish. I sketched out the scene I wanted for the final but found when applying colour and all the detail it took a lot longer than it should of. None the less I’m happy with the outcome.

My dinosaur work could have turned out a lot better, with this I thought that it showed in my prep work that my rendering had improved a little but for the final the background is letting it down. The thing was the background behind the dinosaur head was pretty much blank, I think looking back on it I could have brought more of the lighting and depth to it.

Besides hating Bradgate I thought my final for this turned out well. It’s an oil painting (still waiting to dry) which I would like to do more oil paintings as I quite enjoy it. I thought I should challenge myself with this one and face my fear of landscapes and trees all in one. Despite hating this kind of thing I thought the final outcome turned out well, you could say that maybe it’s a bit abstract?

Vehicle designing was a very interesting project. Once I started drawing down ideas, more and more started to come about to. I did a white box model of what I imagined the final finished thing to look like once I had sketched down all my ideas. I like problem solving through drawing, I thought in the early stages of this the vehicle that is made to work in water was maybe a little too big in which I changed it by process of sketching down new ideas. Would be good to know if it would actually work, I mean it should?

More Imagineering with the war of the world’s project. I thought that this was pretty similar to the vehicle project in how we need to draw ideas down and develop them. I went through a process of coming up with ideas of the final design using an 8x8 grid which helped. I wanted something quite scary, I wanted to create one idea I had drawn down but finished up creating an edited version of it as things started to change when modelling the thing with wire and sculpy.

Urban work was very nice to do, drawing the built environment was something I wanted to do more this year but haven’t found much time to go out and do that. Why I liked it so much is because it allowed me to use my knowledge of perspective, especially one point perspective which I like and I was able to take the blocky visual elements of the streets and buildings into my work. Like I say I could draw the built environment all day I was able to find a street with elements in it I like, it even has a tree in the scene, which is taking a risk by my standards!

Overall I think it’s been a good semester. I’ve tried to keep up to date with all my work and done some extra work on top of everything. The only thing I think that I’ll be let down by in the assessment is that I never had the time to finish my personal project for Game Production, I haven’t done enough work in that module. In visual design I’ve tried keeping up to date and done extra still life work and a piece of fruit each week which I quite happy with but feel that I could of done more. I found that in doing personal work it kind of interferes with the mandatory work but I’m managing my time to do it. In my blog I’ve done my best to get the tasks done and write up about my own work and do extra personal work on things like games that interest me. I was criticised last time for not adding no images or links in my blog which I have attempted to do more of this time around.

For the assessment I am hopeful of:

Game Production – Adequate, Visual Design – Good, Blog – Excellent.

Like I say I can’t see anything better than an adequate in Game Production because of the personal work. Hoping for at least a good in visual design but I don’t know if that’ll happen and maybe I’m pushing my Blog a little there?

I think realistically, I predict:

Game Production – Inadequate, Visual Design – Adequate, Blog – good/very good?

Is what I’ll get but we’ll see…

Year 2 - Week 9 - November 28th - December 02nd

It’s all about Interior design this week. Being asked to redesign the 9^th floor for our course can either be easy or hard, personally I have a few ideas but I would have just preferred to draw an interior at home. It’s been another Imagineering project on top of another lately, with the vehicle, War of the Worlds, Mortal Engines and now this… I’m putting ideas down on paper but kind of struggling to visualise it in action. I’m thinking I want to re-design the Game Art seminar room however, basically I’m think of designing a room similar to the Queens building seminar we use for films and guest lectures, only difference is that this is a lot smaller than that, probably about 1/4^th of the size and the ideas are still in practise as of now. But we’ve never done something like this so it’s interesting looking inspirational ideas for interior design. I imagine this is what we’ll have to do with the group projects coming up next month, designing each room so it’s as if it’s getting us prepared for it.

Lately I’ve been drawing a lot of still life, in what I call my perspective ‘sketchbook’. I’ve been setting up still life objects to draw daily and found that it is coming along quite well; I’ve done quite a few as far. Basically I’m using it as not just for 12 hours self-directed study but also primarily to try and improve my rendering ability. Back in College I remember looking at the work of Giorgio Morandi, were he would paint bottles and other still life objects but not the labels stuck on the sides of them.

 
Naura Morta - Giorgio Morandi (1929)

Still Life with Cups and Boxes (1951)

My style of drawing is will differ from the next person like it does with everyone, the way I see it is that the labels that come on household object such as boxes etc. are not necessary, the way I see is that they aren’t needed because they don’t add anything to the image which is why I like to draw the basic shapes of the objects in perspective then add the lighting in. It feels more ‘cleaner’ and ‘neater’ if you will just like Morandi’s work. I found that the style in which I draw in is quite similar to Morandi’s, he proves that all the detail is that necessary in an image. I personally struggle with drawing logo’s etc. and can’t copy them quite accurately, his style lets you forget about all that, because it’s not always about how much detail you can put in, sometimes you can find yourself getting so caught up in detail you forget the bigger picture. Morandi himself explored composition, placement and different shapes and forms these everyday objects provided as well as lighting.

http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/still_life/morandi/giorgio_morandi.htm

I’ve also been using the still life to explore composition more also, something I talked about a couple of weeks ago but also something we talked about this week to. I’m trying to set up the still life in a way that I can put the horizon line about 3/4ths of the way up the page but also try to use the rule of thirds so that the placement of the object on the desk isn’t just dead in the centre of the image. If I stand the desk in which the objects are placed on against the corner of the room I can use the lighting of the wall to define the hard edge of the objects I’m drawing, it also allows me a wide viewing angle in which I pick a spot to sit and then draw the object itself which is placed in position so it matches up with the horizon line.

Cicular Still Life

Still Life Box 

It can sound confusing, and it is, composition is still something I’m trying to master, but I feel like I’m slowly but surely getting better at it.

Below

Like Identity, Below was similar in ways. In Identity we looked at the environment and how we can try to make use of a limited area. That film is set in one motel; this film is set in one submarine. It’s similar in the ways of how in Identity the characters were practically stranded in the motel overnight, whereas this one the character cannot leave the submarine unless the want to be killed and be in the middle of nowhere in the ocean. Basically like Identity they are trying to make use of the environment since it is just limited to one submarine with different various rooms scattered around. What is again similar to Identity is that it’s basically a horror film thus the same kind of events take place such as people being attacked and mysterious things happening all the way throughout the film, it was kind of like watching an ‘Identity 2’ in honesty.

The ways it was different however was that the characters are on a mission to rescue survivors, whereas in Identity the characters just need to somewhere to stay overnight as the rain outside is causing flooding, though however I guess you can compare and say it is similar… Similar in the fact that in both situations you can say that it’s dangerous to go outside and then you can say it’s dangerous inside in both situations to… In Identity there is someone going around killing everyone and in Below there is a ‘ghost’ of some sort doing pretty much the same. It’s quite interesting, it’s as if both films have a similar plot but just set in different environments.

Enough of the story though, I thought that this film had good visuals, it’s set underwater all the way through until the final scene , so you expect to see a lot of blue and dark tones of colour throughout. Blue was definitely the most common colour in the film. The odd yellow, green, white, black and grey popping up to and a bit or red. It feels as if every film we watch has the same sort of colour palette.

It’s not until the final scene you sort of get a relief of seeing the same things over and over, but the idea of the whole film set in one location is great and they again like Identity made use of the different areas they were limited to. I’ve never heard of a World War II horror film before so it was nice to see a sort of different side or ‘idea’ if you like brought about the World War in this film.

I don’t know but to say it was supposed to be set back in the 1940’s, it just didn’t feel like it to me, it all seemed a bit to modern but however they captured the sense of fear and danger of being in a war and underwater very well and the ‘ghost’/horror side to it and the costumes they are wearing added to that feel very well I thought.