From hovel to hobbit hole.

I've finished the written part of my Easter Game design document, a rough version for now. I better start this 3D project, so i've drawn up a quick floor plan for my hobbit hole, and made it look pretty.

I am only going to be modelling the Entrance Hall and the Drawing Room. However i feel that these two rooms are a good choice, as the two-way fireplace, candle lighting and moonlight from the window should create interesting lighting situations for my renders.

Next i'll create a more detailed floor plan of the Entrance Hall and Drawing Room, so that i can plot what objects i would like and where they should be placed. Lastly i want to paint a perspective illustration of the rooms to portray what sort of textures and atmosphere i'd like to use.

Here is the final version, with the more detailed floor plan of the 2 rooms that i am going to model - the Front Hall and the Drawing Room. Things will most likely change during illustration and 3D, but that's all part of the creative process eh?

Floating Pumpkins

Heres a little update on my Halloween Challenge. Fred and nick suggested i remove the legs and make them float, we then came up with the idea of them having tentacles like the aliens from Crisis.  I also decided to brush up the background perspective and add some more atmosphere by painting in fog.

Decided that i was spending too much time on this one, especially considering it failed from the start. I should have kept doing more thumbs before hand and then go from there instead of just rushing in with the first 5 minuite sketch that i did. However i don't mind too much how it turned out, but it could have been a lot better. 

Darn still no new artwork, hoping to get the boring side of things out of the way, lots of writing, theory...ing and thinking of ideas. Here is the current idea of my Easter Game after looking through my brainstorm and picking out the best bits.

Bit too early for Easter isn't it?

Heres my brainstorm for ideas about what to do for my Easter Game Project. We have been tasked to create a game design document for a Flash game with the theme of Easter. I think this is going to be my final idea, for now:

The easter bunny is trying to take over christmas and you've got to stop him. The game will be a side-scrolling platformer like the classic mario games. But you can't attack the enemies, instead you need to avoid them. But the 'interesting game mechanic' is that you've got to alter the level design in order to avoid the enemies, for example placing a new platform above an enemy so that you can walk over the top so it doesnt see you.

And here is a very quick 5 min sketch of what i might be planning to paint for our forum 'Halloween Challenge' for this half term.

Sketchhhhh

I really need to get back into the habit of sketching more. So heres a digital enviro sketch, trying to focus primarily on the composition and atmosphere, which i'm fairly happy with for now. Took around 40-50 mins.

More perspective

Really need to nail perspective and composition, heres some really quick thumbnail sketches focusing on those prinicples, didn't scan all of the pages but chose the best combination. Still have a long way to go.

Acrylics

I recieved the parcel of my paints today from home, so i thought i'd test them out - As i really hate traditional paints. However i was quite pleased with the outcome of this piece, so maybe ill have some more practice in the future.

Acrylycs on Bristol Board, scanned and then a bit of photoshopping over the top.

Resonance Presentation

We weere tasked to do a presentation on an innovative flash or indie game for next monday and to explain the mechanics and how they could be developed. I chose to do flash game Resonance that i stumbled accross whilst searching for flash games to use.

I really liked this game as it is one of the only flash games i've actually been compelled to finish, even though its short and not extremely hard, it stilled made me want to keep playing and finsih it.

Read the presentation for more info:

Summary

So, what have i been upto in uni?

Today i was given our first project, the brief for 3D titled: Blue, blue, electric blue, that's the colour of my room.....  During this project we must draw our room in perspective, with measurements and then model it in 3DSmax using phtoo reference and to scale of these measurements. Then texture it, add lighting and render it out with different lighting conditions, similulating different times of day.

It sounds good, but i would really have liked to model any room, or a made-up room, instead of the boring one that i am sat in now - the only room in my house. But, its not much choice... i've sent Mike an email to see if theres any lee-way, we shall see.

Platformer

3D / Action

Racing

We've also been doing some perspective, shading, environment thumbnail and level layout chart practice during the drawing for games lessons. In terms of concept art i very much prefer environement / level design to character design, as i think theres so much more you can do with it and i simply just find it more fun and interesting to draw and design. However the drawing for games class has really inspired me to step-up my traditional skills and my basic drawing skills such as perspective, which should hopefully help me in the long run with my environments and levels as i am becomming very digitially dependant at the moment.

Enviro Sketch

Enviro Thumbnails

Perspective Practice & Enviro Thumb

We are also, hopefully, going to be out on location anywhere in Plymouth, sat with our sketchbooks and will need to be drawing an environment from life. We are also going to be using paints while we do this... which is something that i am very bad at - or atleast i have been very bad at in the past. So hopefully that will go well and i will be able to gain more confidence with traditional paints.

Comunity Drawing

Another quick update on that community sketch from our Game Face website that i started before, since the last post Fred has turnt the hat into a very epic - hair picking robotic hat, which is great! nobody else really picked it up after so i decided id do a qucik paint over of the face that i painted previously to get it looking a bit more presentable.

3D Scribbles

Very quick update as i've been really ill over the last few days and would really enjoy nothing more than to slip into bed and get some sleep. SO here is a quick scribble that i did a for a 'community sketch' that a few of us at college are doing (one person draws one feature of the character, next person adds more, next person adds more, etc etc) so i started off by drawing a random asian man. Its quite quick and is un-referenced, however i'm quite fond of the values of the face / eyes, something attracts me to it.

Also a quick render of a basic japanese tea room model, trying to get used to the interface and tools of 3DSmax, kind've getting the hang of it now.

The King is Dead..

Was watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and paused it in order to do something and found that i had paused it on King Theodens death scene, so i decided i would do a really quick speed paint of the screen-cap. Its not finished but i quite like it for a quick'n. I need to focus more on proportions though...

Forums

EDIT: Here is Viki's awesome website / forum that we will be using from now on. Make room Facebook, we'are comming through!

These are the forums that i have created (using free websites of course) for what our website could look like, just linking them here so that i can find them at uni.

Awesome.... :O

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo from Jeb Corliss on Vimeo.

Nazi... Zombie... Hedgehogs...?

Some quick ideas for a loading screen and main menu screen for our very strange game concept that had to be a combination of the top ten of a certain console. We were given Dreamcast... I believe the top-10 we found were:

• Crazy Taxi
• Skies of Arcadia
• Resident Evil: Code Veronica
• Jet Grind (Set) Radio
• Typing zombies.. or something?
• Shenmue
• Capcom vs Marvel
• and some more..

And this is what we came up with:

'Sky pirates, in sky taxis, chase Nazi Zombie Hedgehogs through a futuristic steampunk Japan, in order to stop them graffiting the country. The game becomes a beat'em'up once you crash into zombies and must fight them.

The Japanese did experimentso n the Nazis which turned them into un-dead hedgehogs who use graffiti to mark their territory. The government has hired you to capture the zombies so that word of the experiments does not get out.'

Random eh?

Self Portrait

I want to try and do frequent self portraits as well as still lifes.
As i faces / heads really are the downfall of my characters, my weakness.

I bought a hand mirror thing, that will be sat on my desk so that at any time i can just open up Photoshop and do a selfportrait. Heres a quick one which isn't finished and kind've looks like me i guess, but in terms of a porrait i'm quite pleased with it, i think i've got the proportions and structure quite well done, could use a lot of refinement but i havnt got time tonight anyways. I will work harder and spend more time on my next ones, i've just been busy tonight so havnt really had the time to obsess over it as much as i would have liked too :(

Also my internet is still being stupidly bad so its getting hard n harder to update this, even if i am creating artowrk, i'm doing my best.

Challenge of the Week 001: Robin Hood

So i made the 'Challenge of the Week' (chow rip-off) thread on the class WIKKI site and the theme for week one is 'Robin Hood'.I want to do something a bit more outisde the box instead of a litteral human robin hood. So i thought, robin hood takes from the rich and gives to poor, magpies take shiny things - rich people like shiny things so maybe theres a connection? ... very vaguelly.

So thats one idea, i also thought about some sort've cyber robin hood that shoots energy arrows, an east asian style robin hood (ninja?) and maybe another play on the fox robin hood that i beleive was a disney film?

Heres a few sketches of what a magpie robin hood might look like, done quite quickly and need to inject more personality into the character, thats if i decide to go with this idea.

Some more work on this idea however i changed the bird to a robin as suggested by a few friends, as i think robins have more character and it would allow for colour to be implemented into the piece bringing furhter interest. Much happier with this idea now, just going to do a few more ideas though i think because i dedicate myself to one.

Heres a quick idea for the final composition of the piece, i've been quite busy lately with other things so havn't really developed this as much as i wanted to, but oh well.

Straw Hat Boy

So i'm getting lazy with my drawing - DAMN YOU UNI - however, a few of us came up wit hthe idea of creating our own CHOW-like challenge of the week on our class WIKI forum, so i created that last night and hopefully it will fuel some very creative peices from everyone in the class and get me back into the groove.

Heres a really random 5 minute sketch i just did whilst thinking about what to do today, i quite like it!