The plan

Before I get onto the subject of my aim for the next month of productivity I should probably cover this weeks happenings. Overall the week hasn't been too productive. Most of the assets I've made have been for personal amusement rather than for specific use. The first of these was the lightsaber.

This model is a rather high poly weapon, and is pushing it even for current generation weapons. however, one thing positive that did come out of this was my further development of different metal materials. There is in fact no textures applied to this 3D model. it is all lighting. The same day I also came to the conclusion that I should probably work on something that was close to my heart and i drew inspiration from, and hoping to be a character artist, it would be appropriate to try and produce a current generation quality 3D model of someone whom I drew inspiration from.

I chose Sir Ian Mckellen, whose career spans from Shakespearean theatre to popular modern sci-fi and fantasy cinema: particularly well known as Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Magneto from X-men films. Additionally, in 1988, McKellen came out and announced he was gay. He became a founding member of Stonewall, one of the United Kingdom's most influential LGBT rights groups, of which he remains a prominent spokesman. This man is an inspiration to me both as a performer and as an LGBT activist and this I thought it appropriate to dedicate this project to him; starting with a photoshop paint of him and a 40min speed paint of him as Gandalf the white.

As I was going to make a 3D model of him studying his face was vital before i jumped into modeling, which i soon after stepped into.

As you can see, modeling the face wasn't too difficult and I do feel quite confident that I can work the topology to how I need it to look. Bearing in mind however, that this face wasn't going to be used for animation or rigging, i didn't really need to add additional topology for smooth deforming when working facial expressions in a rig. Unfortunatly, I've hit the same wall as i did with my grizzly bear. My laptop cannot handle much in the way of hair at the moment so in terms of real practice, I will have to wait until september to get onto a better computer for working with hair. Hopefully with hair this model will look more like Ian Mckellen. Until then It's hard to judge exactly how far off I am for correct facial shapes. One alternative to my problem would be to use alpha channels, but that won't give me a realistic look, and it would also be a painstakingly slow process to put all the alphas facing the right direction, but I think I'll leave that.

Next up just as a bit of fun:

To be honest I made this purely because I'm a geek and I was kinda on the subject of Lord of the Rings anyway. In any case In doing both this and the lightsaber, I've come to realise that in making different metals & metalic properties, ie: steel, crome, gold; that they require quite different material affects and lighting conditions. So my messing around hasn't gone to complete waist, and i've made appropriate notes on each metalic effect.

Finally, just as a speed model, since I'm surrounded by poultry, I thought I would work on one. First and most obvious one was a chicken.

This was done purely to help me in modeling faster. It's incomplete and the textures aren't refined but this was the result of 2 and a half hours work. modeling, unwrapping and texturing all in the time limit.

Now to the plan. My plan isn't too exact but the aim is clear. Each week for the next 4 weeks I would like to have 1 speed, low poly model, and a medium poly model. The aim is to both work on the speed at which I model and the quality of my higher poly models to produce work for my portfolio. In addition I would like to have accompanying paints to keep up with my 2d work. Further to that, I would like my model of Ian Mckellen to be finished, even if i have to use opacity maps for the hair. Hopefully by the end of the summer I will have a nice mix of assets that will show my progression from being a second year to a third year computer games artist.

School's out for summer...and into exile i go

The academic year may well and truly be over, but this summer has been no time for being negligent. After trying throughout the past year, and failing to secure an internship for the summer, along with letting an internship opportunity with Ubisoft slip through my grasp, it's been no time to feel sorry for myself. Rather, my fear of this happening again is so much greater than my crushed spirit. So i've set about being a busy bee to prevent that from happening.

After parlaying with the Art Director at Ubisoft and getting some useful and much needed feedback on my portfolio, i've taken these words of wisdom and begun gearing myskills towards both improvement and understanding of programs for the industry, and aiming those skills towards my FMP, to get a nice little grade, hopefully better than what i got this year!

At the start of this month i moved well away from the distractions of Leicester,and havecome tomy parent's quiet abode in the middle ofnowhere. Aka, France, 40minutes drive from the nearest town.

Once i arrived, first thing was first. What am I doing for my FMP? so many people know already what they want to do. Eventually i came to the decision that I would base my FMP on Human evolution. I've always had a love of pre-history, particularly the Mesozoic era but that one had already been taken, so this was the next best thing. The idea was to do something i could relate to characters, and make a simple environment. Hypothesis: model 6 stages of human evolution in a small museum environment.

The first thing i realised about this was that I have very little skill and no experience in rendering hair. So the first thing i did was to try and make some models that would allow me to work on this. The first thing i went about making was a baby seal. Evidently, i hate the things, but they're small, and mostly fur, so why not.

This first one i did the only way i knew how. I basically made my model, and then added about 1,000 planes and made them alphas with hair textures on them. the result looked like it was supposed to be hair but hardly what i could settle for if i was to make headway towards my FMP. So I went about a little research and below are me results.



Still not completely realistic, but the hair on this model is massively improved. And no extra triangles were taken up. So the model count was 1,000 triangles lower than the initial attempt, and it saved texture space. I also realised that if i was going to pursue hair, lighting is very important if you want to make it look real.

To work on my hair and lighting technique and understanding a little more, I did a little work on something even simpler. Grass. In fact, all i did was make a plane, apply the hair and fur modifier, and begin to play with the hair perimeters and lighting for a few hours. My result below.

Moving onwards and upwards, I decided to try and apply the same thing to a more complex model, and try and give the hair more of a directional look, as well as taking lighting more into consideration. The model I went for was a male, grizzly bear.

Unfortunatly, after modelling, setting up the rig and making the hair guides, my laptop couldn't handle rendering the hair. =/. How I'm going to get round that one is beyond me. When i return to the UK, I will have at least a month before the next academic year to work more on my ability to make the all important hair to cover my character for my FMP.

Seeing as My production had currently come to a holt, i tried to look for a way to make the best of a rubbish situation. Setting about research for FMP into human evolution, I was quick to discover, rather remember, that France and Germany is a relative hot bed for Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Heidelbergensis remains. Turns out the area I'm in is littered with little museums and what not, specifically on human history of evolution. My mum also has an archive of photos from when I was younger and used to visit all these museums in France. So i began visiting museums and compiling research. I Chose which stages of our evolution i wanted to look into.

Australopithecus Afarensis

Homo Habilis

Homo Ergaster/Homo Erectus

Homo Heidelbergensis

Homo Neanderthalensis - because you can't have a museum on this subject without it

Homo Sapien

I then started to work on paints and ideas for each respective stage of our evolution.

One things is for sure after doing this series of paints, It definitely made me a lot more confident in painting hair in photoshop. It also forced me to actually look at how muscles are composed on the face since i only really had bones and other people's ideas of what they looked like to go off. However, doing paints just isn't enough to give me a good idea of what these things were shaped like and their relative proportions in comparison to that of a human.

My next task was to take a good look at my photo reference from my museum visits,

and then from that make some models in 3DS Max:

All these skulls were done quite low poly. Each was around 1,400 triangles apart from the Homo Sapien skull which came to almost 5,000 triangles. This i found very much invaluable research as it gave me a much better understanding of not only how our decedents' were shaped but also where their spine attached to the skull itself and thus the implied posture that came with it. The study of our skull all became a very useful exercise in understanding how our faces are shaped which will no doubt come in handy with the next character face i model. Needless to say that it also had an added benefit of speeding up my modeling. the final model, the human skull only took me 4 hours to model, unwrap and texture. quite good going i think ^^.

As a bit of a lul in my productivity i decided work on something fun and less taxing. In combination with speed paints I also started to look at things that inspired me. My all time favourite actress Sigourney Weaver, not only featured in the Alien franchise as one of the most badass protagonists of all time, but she has also done a massive amount of support work for the gay community including featuring in the emotional film, "Prayers for bobby". She's a woman close to my heart. Unfortunately, *cough* no names being mentioned, a certain student has already claimed manopoloy over Mrs Weaver and the Alien franchise for this summer: but just for fun, i proceeded to recreate a scene from Aliens, featuring facehuggers. It also gave me an oppertunity to look at lighting, metal and glass, which will be conducive to my FMP Environment.

So that's July's productivity in a nutshell, not including sketches and other traditional work because I'm scannerless out here in the wilds. lol.

What i have in store for next month I'm not too shore. What I would much like to have by the end of the summer is a character, worthy to put in my portfolio, and maybe another environment and weapon to put in there as well. More paints are a must and I could always do with doing more work that is conducive to my FMP, weather it's character, environment or general asset work and research. There's 7 days left to this month so I will have a clear Idea of exactly what I want to achieve in August.

Where did the time go?

Well it’s seems we’ve reached the end of the year. And OMG how fast did that go. It seems like 5 minutes ago I was having my mug shot taken on the first day of first year, and now I’m 2/3 of the way through the degree. *sigh* I’m assuming third year will go even quicker, especially if the international exchange all goes to plan.

In any case, I’ve come along leaps and bounds in a few areas this year which I guess is making transition from students/hobbyist in 3D and 2D to actual Game Artists. In 2D I’ve come to recognise that in terms of the course, Visual Design as a whole isn’t my forte. When it comes to Imagineering something and making it look realistic, I practically face plant the floor. But when it comes to imitating something that’s real, i.e.: life drawing or still life, my technical skill and colour theory have improved massively, which is probably stemmed from my love of drawing people and characters. This is probably one of the reasons why I was aiming down the character artist/3D path, over character design.

In 3D, it has become apparent that in terms of assets, my knowledge lies in my understanding of shape of and how I can relate that in topology, particularly with organic objects, again emphasising my character modelling skills. I have also understood much more this year how to involve edge loops with the overall shape and form in consideration of rigging and animation. Further, although it isn’t quite to the extent of my topology knowledge, my skills in unwrapping and texturing have improves massively, due to my better understanding of how different texture sheets work. I don’t know why but it’s almost as if over the summer, something clicked. In any case, one huge step for me was the beginning of learning how to add assets into an actual game engine through the group project. Making our assets come to life in a playable world is what being a 3D artist is all about. Although it’s not exactly what I want to go into, I can easily see how I felt the same way last year about 3D modelling, and with more practice, my understanding of UDK and how everything in that respect works, will improve, and bring about a new joy in exporting and level design.

Despite my reluctance to do anything for a sizable chunk of this year, I think I’ve done a bloody good job of avoiding the second year slump. Mike’s foreboding words at the start of the year in conjunction with several guest lecturers and the pressure to actually have something in a portfolio ready for an internship, had me working pretty much solid throughout the year. In contrast to last year however, This time last year I really didn’t want to be a 3D artist, I wanted to stick to the 2D side of things, which in all fairness is understandable, it was my comfort zone. But now looking at the broader picture, and my new love for character modelling, my goal now is to be a character artist, specifically a 3D modeller, but with me acquired knowledge of both, I can now take what I am best at from both aspects and make one impressive FMP. Lol. (so he says)

Come dead child, sit on uncle Tom's lap and tell me what you wanna be when you "grow up".

Where do I want to go and how do I get there? To be honest that’s quite a weighted question. It’s no longer as simple as it used to be. When I was younger I wanted to be a palaeontologist whatever the stakes. I assumed that I would go through the education system and once I graduated from university, someone would wave a magic wand and I’d have made it. My naive mind thought university automatically = success and dream job. These days however, every blind monkey with a stick has a degree in all manner of ridicules things.

I’m a little bit more clued up on how things work now though. I no longer want to scour the world to make the next big pre-historic discovery and get my name on it, but rather to be a game artist, a job I’m probably equally if not more passionate about. Specifically I would rather be a character artist than anything else. Characters and drawing organic things have always inspired me so much more than anything man made ever could. Even today I don’t understand why someone would rather have a Photoshoped cityscape on their bedroom wall over a forest clearing with god rays breaking through the canopy at sunrise. In any case, modelling organic assets always allows me to play a lot more with topology which is probably my favourite part of being a 3D modeller, and as an Artist, drawing people is what I enjoy most, even if my skills are still somewhat to be desired. In terms of designing characters, as a 3D artist, I would have little involvement with it but it would still be something that I could enjoy should my career take that path. I’ve always enjoyed from a young age, designing characters, thinking of their heritage, what close they wear and why. What trinkets they would carry with them or any traumas they’d had in their lives. Equally though, if I was to start in environment design, I wouldn’t be working in malcontent. I’d be happy where I was until I felt I had gained what I could from that side of being a 3D artist. Character design is my ultimate goal.

Pretty much the only way I can achieve this is the blatantly obvious. Aside from going through the motions of getting my face and my work out there, and making the effort to make myself stand out from everyone else on our course, nothing short of bloody hard work will get me to where I want to be. To become a better game artist requires practice and patience just like any other discipline, and that’s pretty much what I must so to get me where I need to be. And we can start by not failing the second year.

Interact with this Design!

Interactive design is in my opinion, the most important part of a game. No matter how good the plot is, how dynamic the game play is or crisp the graphics are, if it handles like an asthmatic and with some heavy shopping then it’s pretty much a waste of time. Interaction design could be considered to be the bridge between worlds, real and cyber. It’s what allows the player to be enveloped by gaming world.

Let’s take a look at what the player physically interacts with to get what they want to happen. The control pad. Let’s just say that I’m just about the happiest person in the world that within my life time, ergonomics and anthropometrics have made their way into the design of the control pad. Even though I’m too young to have experienced what it was like to physically handle a joy stick, in an arcade filled with sweaty pre-teens, I understand that they were designed for practicality, they worked, and they worked well. However, when it came to home entertainment systems, looking now at the designs from the SNES, Sega mega drive and PS1, not only were they ugly, but they felt disgusting and uncomfortable in your hand, until they got warm. I mean they worked, but just, eww. And then the consoles themselves, they worked, and to be honest, the design for the time was perfectly fine, we didn’t know any different, but good god, there was no style, rather very little to their designs, they were all essentially bricks. It kinda makes me chuckle now as I look over at my SNES next to my latest model 360. Ahh we’ve come so far. Gradually over my short lifetime, as technology developed, and technology got cheaper, the control pads and consoles evolves into the much prettier things they are now today.

Yet within the past 2 years, a new way for the player to interact with the game has developed for the home entertainment system. No longer do we need a control pad of any description. Not even a wii mote to dance around our living room, but our bodies ourselves become the control pad, which has brought about a real chance for the family to interact in games. Not that families didn’t before, but it was generally just siblings or father and son kinda thing. In all fareness, this does work well for certain game genres, and there is much more that they can do with it. However, I don’t think that they will ever truly get rid of the control pad. There are certain genres of game, just too popular, which require a control pad to play.

In terms of GUI (Game user interface), fundamentally with games, not a great deal has changed. If I go back to Super Mario World on the SNES, and I press pause, I’m greeted with pretty much the same thing now as I was then. “continue”, “options”, “save”, “load” & “quit”. And depending on the genre of the game maybe adding “combo list” or “hints” etc. However, one thing that has most defiantly changed is how these things are presented. Back in the days of the SNES the game would stop and you would be presented with a flat screen of text. Although, a lot of games do still do that because the genre demands it i.e. fighting games, a lot of games have started presenting the title menu on a 3D real time background, usually with moving stuff behind, with the text font related to that particular semantic field. Other games, largely first person shooters, recently including a reward system and upgrade system for everything, have added masses of options to those particular lists. One game which stands out head and shoulders above the crowd for GUI, is Dead Space. With Dead Space, the Pause menu doesn’t stop the game, the game is constantly running. It also doesn’t come up full screen, it is a projection from the protagonist, Isec’s wrist. This fits in perfectly with the survival horror theme. To stop and look at where you are on the map, where you need to go, look at how much ammo or health you have, leaves you vulnerable to ambush and forces the player to think about where they pause. Not only that but instead of having a standard health bar in the corner and ammo/ lives next to it, all these things are displayed on the character himself, adding to the element of realism, and avoiding distraction from the player’s focus on the atmosphere of the game.

Love Dead Space.

What the future holds for interactive design in the games world, well, that could be interesting. I think in terms of the control and direct player to game interaction, that has the most way to gain here. If they actually put more effort into developing assets like Kinect and compatible games for that, then we could pretty easily hit off on virtually reality for your home system, which thinking about it could be detrimental for people like the WOW lovers out there. Modders have done it already in their homes, but equally, if interaction was to take that path, it could easily become a phase as virtual reality in theme parks worse off pretty much instantly. On the other hand, something in the direction of the minority report would be brilliant in terms of pause menus and title screens would be brilliant and would go a long way.

Who wants a geeky tattoo?

For about a year now I’ve been “mmming” and “aaahing” about whether or not to get a tattoo, particularly a game related tattoo. There about 3 of 4 games which I’ve been thinking about, games which mean something to me and it’s been on my mind a lot more recently. However, today while I was doing a whole lot of nothing, this popped up:

Convenient much?

As I Delved further into the article, the most common tattoo seemed to be the Triforce symbol from Zelda, but needless to say that I discovered some pretty hardcore gamer tattoos. Some awful, some quite simple and cute, but what I had in mind was far removed from the entire character selection screen of the Marvel vs Capcom on my torso. I was thinking something small and personal.

In any case, it was defiantly interesting to hear why some people got their gamer tattoos. Some said: it was to remind them of a particular person, or fond memory. Others said it was to remind them of a simpler time in their child hood, free from taxes and bills. A couple simply said, “because I love the game” or “I add every game I’ve completed to the collection”, but whatever their reason, to me I guess the reason that makes the most sense would be of sentimental value. But in any case, This article didn’t really help me in my decision, it just confirmed that there are so many people out there with a passion for games, equal to mine. So much so that they’re willing to give that particular game the highest honour they can, by branding it on their person for the rest of their days. Don’t know why but this article almost made me feel like it’s my duty to get out there and help continue to inspire people so passionately.

Musik im Computerspielen

The last time I visited the subject of music, although I was aware of how music affects games, my actual knowledge of the subtleties of how it is used was very limited, and although I still have much to learn my time in our group project and trying to incorporate music appropriate to the genre has made a massive difference to how I see music in games.

Although I do still agree that artists such as Martin O’Donnell and Nobuo Uematsu are amazing composers and have rightly earned themselves a name, the grandeur of their music isn’t appropriate for all gaming situations. RPGs and first person shooters, like within Halo and Final Fantasy have music of high energy and give everything a sense of scale, all be it few sad moments or music for “evil characters” there is next to no ambient music, or music that gradually builds tension or creates a theme or atmosphere.

The genre of the game we produced in the group project was that of a survival genre, so naturally, if we were going to include music, we had to research into that which is included in survival horror games and films of the same nature. Music that was ambient, yet atmospheric, and what was appropriate to create a jumpy moment or simply sound effects of dripping water or a broken circuit board.

The artist we found who made the most appropriate music in terms of ambience and creating the right atmosphere we wanted, was Jason Graves, who composed the Dead Space Soundtrack. However, it wasn’t just enough that we had found music we could use, we had to consider when to use it and where to slowly build up tension with the player. Too much or little tension in the wrong place could unnecessarily leave the player with a feeling of anti-climax which is the last thing you want when playing a game. We also gathered a compilation of sound effects for items in the environment, several sounds for each asset. We then had to consider the extremity of the sound or how synthetic it should sound depending on the actual level of destruction of the asset and we had to consider how that played a part in the environment. For example: when considering a dripping pipe, we had to ensure that it was a slight drip, not too frequent. It had to sound like it was dripping into a small puddle, not a pool or solid concrete, and we had to take into account the volume of the sound in conjunction with the ambient music. All these little details needed to be taken into account for every sound effect which gave us much appreciation for how much effort and skill goes into creating different moods and levels of tension in all genres of games.

Coming back to the Halo franchise, Although it has no elements of eerie tension like Dead Space does, Martin O’Donnell creates a different kind of tension through different instruments and keeping the pace of the music high as halo is a much faster paced game. As a skill I would say creating moods through music takes a massive amount of skill for whatever genre of game or film it is being produced for, which I now have a much better appreciation for.