As the lift doors slide open I gaze upon the full wall mural for animation, sure it may not be the best drawing I’ve seen but the bright colours and creativity is both inviting and respectful to the animation course.
Turn-around, however, and what does Game Art have to offer - two miniscule guru posters. Not only has it little to do with the course but the artistic skill involved is that of a 5 year old on photoshop.
Thankfully they have since been replaced by some student work but it still attracts little attention and doesn’t really celebrate the success of our course.
We are skill-set accredited, there should be a full wall digi-paint up there. Not only will the technical skill be far greater than the animations offering but it will also claim back the corridor as ours.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
The things you learn
One thing that I have definitely learned from the rooftop project is how to manage my time.
I had very clearly written a little calendar schedule which I religiously stuck to but I still found myself going over my personal deadline.
This is because I had miscalculated the amount of time it would take to unwrap, texture and import all my assets. The Unreal engine I have gotten to grips with but the unwrapping and texturing took ages.
But the positives I take from this are how to manage my time for my FMP. As I will be doing an environmental scene I can now budget more time for texturing and I will most definitely be unwrapping as I go along because doing it all in one stint is just brain-rotting!
One thing I was proud of was getting the particle effects to work. It took a while but I was ecstatically happy and now I feel that Unreal isn’t this big scary program but actually a lot of fun and I will definitely incorporate it into my FMP.
The only thing I am not happy about is my skydome and I might re-address this problem before the summative assessment as I am in the zone with y vehicle project.
The main issue I have with it is making the panoramic image. I made my own using photographs taken out of the fletcher building but it doesn’t look crisp enough as other examples of work I’ve seen. Without pointing fingers this is most likely because their magical panoramic images were pulled from the internet but I am going to stick by my morals and use my own textures.
I did originally use the skyline from a recent foggy day as it was spooky and mesmerising but this didn’t come across in Unreal as there are no dynamic elements so I might rethink the weather and lighting over Christmas.
I had very clearly written a little calendar schedule which I religiously stuck to but I still found myself going over my personal deadline.
This is because I had miscalculated the amount of time it would take to unwrap, texture and import all my assets. The Unreal engine I have gotten to grips with but the unwrapping and texturing took ages.
But the positives I take from this are how to manage my time for my FMP. As I will be doing an environmental scene I can now budget more time for texturing and I will most definitely be unwrapping as I go along because doing it all in one stint is just brain-rotting!
One thing I was proud of was getting the particle effects to work. It took a while but I was ecstatically happy and now I feel that Unreal isn’t this big scary program but actually a lot of fun and I will definitely incorporate it into my FMP.
The only thing I am not happy about is my skydome and I might re-address this problem before the summative assessment as I am in the zone with y vehicle project.
The main issue I have with it is making the panoramic image. I made my own using photographs taken out of the fletcher building but it doesn’t look crisp enough as other examples of work I’ve seen. Without pointing fingers this is most likely because their magical panoramic images were pulled from the internet but I am going to stick by my morals and use my own textures.
I did originally use the skyline from a recent foggy day as it was spooky and mesmerising but this didn’t come across in Unreal as there are no dynamic elements so I might rethink the weather and lighting over Christmas.
Patience my young Grasshopper
As the Gurus and Grasshoppers comes to an end I thought it appropriate to put my thoughts on here.
Overall I think the scheme is beneficial for both sides and turned out to be rather successful.
At first I was apprehensive that none of the first years would be interested but luckily enough they were still in that bewildered phase where they turn up to every lecture religiously and soon enough they become genuinely engaged and listened to what we had to see them take on-board our advice and improve and I must admit I learned a few things myself. Working closely with other Gurus gave me the chance to see their techniques and shortcuts they use and giving mini tutorials every week has definitely improved my communicated skills.
However the scheme did have its downsides. No clear timescale was set so the tutorials and texturing projects we planned to give were cut short as the scheme was brought to an abrupt end and some weeks when stress levels ran high, it was extremely annoying to have a first year hanging off your elbow.
Overall I’m not sure how much the Grasshoppers benefited. They pretty much learned to model and texture quicker than our weekly meets but I guess it’s the little shortcuts and timesavers that will help them most. It also makes the course more close-knit as we all work and learn together which is very rare to see in other university courses.
Overall I think the scheme is beneficial for both sides and turned out to be rather successful.
At first I was apprehensive that none of the first years would be interested but luckily enough they were still in that bewildered phase where they turn up to every lecture religiously and soon enough they become genuinely engaged and listened to what we had to see them take on-board our advice and improve and I must admit I learned a few things myself. Working closely with other Gurus gave me the chance to see their techniques and shortcuts they use and giving mini tutorials every week has definitely improved my communicated skills.
However the scheme did have its downsides. No clear timescale was set so the tutorials and texturing projects we planned to give were cut short as the scheme was brought to an abrupt end and some weeks when stress levels ran high, it was extremely annoying to have a first year hanging off your elbow.
Overall I’m not sure how much the Grasshoppers benefited. They pretty much learned to model and texture quicker than our weekly meets but I guess it’s the little shortcuts and timesavers that will help them most. It also makes the course more close-knit as we all work and learn together which is very rare to see in other university courses.
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Rooftop Mania
A quick look at my Rooftop area. I put this together in 3DsMax quickly just to see if the level would look coherent.
This area is adapted mainly from the workshop area outside Fletcher as it provided me with enough reference and the layout looked rather appealing and interesting to me.
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Rooftop Mood-boards
Day 1 of the rooftop project and so far I'm sticking to my schedule.
Today's task was to source my own reference to make moodboards, so armed with my camera i set off for Leicester - or at least as far as I could go due to the EDL protests. But have no fear as i came across a fountain of endless reference right here on the DMU campus. Pipes, vents, alarms you name it I found it.
Well as you can clearly see i put together 3 moodboards showing the different aspects I felt make up a successful rooftop environment.
Moodboard 1 shows rooftops in general so that i could get a feel for layout, size and height.
Moodboard 2 shows assets found on existing rooftops so that i could determine what assets my own rooftop would need.
Moodboard 3 shows the textures, materials and colours found on my travels and from these i created a colour table so that all my concepts will follow along the same colour scheme.
Saturday, 17 April 2010
There's a Zombie on your lawn
Oh dear, my latest obsession is yet another Popcap game.
It’s a challenging, problem solving and intellectual game that pushes the boundaries of in-game humour
Oh yes, and it all centres around zombie eating plants.
Plants vs. Zombies is the latest sensation to take over my life. I would be ashamed and embarrassed, what with major upcoming titles being released but I’m not.
Because it is awesome.
As my loved one sits glued to his PS3 drooling over the latest Final Fantasy, I can be found sat at my pc, fending off a horde of brain-eating zombies with sunflowers and wall-nuts (I said it was intellectually witty). The simple, colourful 2D art and cheerful jaunty music can keep me entertained for hours.
Which has inspired me to do a bit of detective work. I am now curious how Popcap has such a huge following of casual gamers…what is their secret?
Let’s start with some background info, which I’m pointing out I didn’t pull straight from Google.
Popcap was founded in 2000 and currently has around under 180 employees under it’s control. Their major-title ‘’Bejelewed’ sold almost 50 millions world-wide over all major consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3 and their efforts have won them over 25 industry awards.
Their latest title ‘Plant vs. Zombies’ was apparently an App store record breaker selling 300,000 units in the first 9 days of its release onto the I-phone.
The audience of most pop cap games is on average a 43 year old woman playing on social networking sites such as Facebook. This audience alone generates more than $1 billion which is mostly made from virtual currencies and buying in-game gifts. This specific audience gave reasons to their gaming addictions as to play with relatives and friends.
So it would seem that casual gaming is mostly comprised of a female audience. Simple rules and addictive gameplay is vital to draw their players into purchasing in-game products to keep this multi-million pound industry afloat.
Bye-Bye Z-brush, hello pixel art?
It’s a challenging, problem solving and intellectual game that pushes the boundaries of in-game humour
Oh yes, and it all centres around zombie eating plants.
Plants vs. Zombies is the latest sensation to take over my life. I would be ashamed and embarrassed, what with major upcoming titles being released but I’m not.
Because it is awesome.
As my loved one sits glued to his PS3 drooling over the latest Final Fantasy, I can be found sat at my pc, fending off a horde of brain-eating zombies with sunflowers and wall-nuts (I said it was intellectually witty). The simple, colourful 2D art and cheerful jaunty music can keep me entertained for hours.
Which has inspired me to do a bit of detective work. I am now curious how Popcap has such a huge following of casual gamers…what is their secret?
Let’s start with some background info, which I’m pointing out I didn’t pull straight from Google.
Popcap was founded in 2000 and currently has around under 180 employees under it’s control. Their major-title ‘’Bejelewed’ sold almost 50 millions world-wide over all major consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3 and their efforts have won them over 25 industry awards.
Their latest title ‘Plant vs. Zombies’ was apparently an App store record breaker selling 300,000 units in the first 9 days of its release onto the I-phone.
The audience of most pop cap games is on average a 43 year old woman playing on social networking sites such as Facebook. This audience alone generates more than $1 billion which is mostly made from virtual currencies and buying in-game gifts. This specific audience gave reasons to their gaming addictions as to play with relatives and friends.
So it would seem that casual gaming is mostly comprised of a female audience. Simple rules and addictive gameplay is vital to draw their players into purchasing in-game products to keep this multi-million pound industry afloat.
Bye-Bye Z-brush, hello pixel art?
Friday, 16 April 2010
A Crisis of Faith
If I were to describe my university experience for the second year I would say it was demoralising.
The start of the year was great, I was engrossed in an interesting project, testing out new software and visited interesting places, overall I was a happy bunny. This led on into a relaxing Christmas holiday and some encouraging feedback that spurred me on into the second term but then everything seemed to collapse underneath me.
I had fallen out with my flat-mates and my self-esteem took a huge knock in which I still haven’t fully recovered. Not only that but I was asked to improve my life-drawing skills with no model, I was asked to stay sane with no weekly therapy sessions and I was asked to make a working group level with practically no group.
Now in all fairness some of these events are unfortunate, due to circumstances that couldn’t be helped and so I took fate into my own hands and tried to make the best of things.
I used my loving boyfriend as a life model, so that I could catch-up, I held make-shift therapy groups down at the pub with fellow peers so that we could vent of steam and having been re-assured that the group projects were individually assessed I began to concentrate more on me.
But this is where it boiled down to the main problem for me, what was said and what was done didn’t quite meet.
After having presented our group projects I was told that the lack of work from other group members wouldn’t reflect on me, but I think it has. I can’t help but think that the projects were assessed in the blink of an eye and those initial prejudices have stuck.
What hurt me even more was that after initial concerns with the overall size of the level, I personally explained our brief and our ideas with the new-improved layout, fairly early on in the semester and got the go-ahead, but then for some reason at the presentations we were told that it wasn’t good enough and too small. If this is the case then why weren’t these issues brought up sooner instead of just patting me on the head and sending me on my way?
I have apparently wasted hours of work on a brief that was never going to be good enough.
I also couldn’t help but notice that the main concern during the reviews was the lack of work with frequent references and comparisons to the 3rd years. I personally believe this is grossly unfair. Surely assessments should be based on the individuals capabilities and under no circumstances should comparisons to students who have 2 years more experience than us should be made, I have found the whole experience demoralising and now I am just focusing on improving my skills and planning the best-damn FMP there shall ever be :P
Although this sounds fairly rantish or possibly even rude. It is not at all intended this way. I am merely trying to keep my self going and to stay sane. These past few months have been testing for me and i have had to change as a person, but by no means am i giving up. I am learning and growing as a person for every day i am on this course and i have developed a repetoire of skills that i hope will be invaluable to me for the rest of my life. If anything, this year has taught me to keep fighting. Not to make excuses and shift the blame, not to run home and hide in the comfort of a mother's love. It has taught me how re-assess my life and instead of giving up on problems, try approaching them from a different angle.
This is not the last you have seen of this Game Art student.
The start of the year was great, I was engrossed in an interesting project, testing out new software and visited interesting places, overall I was a happy bunny. This led on into a relaxing Christmas holiday and some encouraging feedback that spurred me on into the second term but then everything seemed to collapse underneath me.
I had fallen out with my flat-mates and my self-esteem took a huge knock in which I still haven’t fully recovered. Not only that but I was asked to improve my life-drawing skills with no model, I was asked to stay sane with no weekly therapy sessions and I was asked to make a working group level with practically no group.
Now in all fairness some of these events are unfortunate, due to circumstances that couldn’t be helped and so I took fate into my own hands and tried to make the best of things.
I used my loving boyfriend as a life model, so that I could catch-up, I held make-shift therapy groups down at the pub with fellow peers so that we could vent of steam and having been re-assured that the group projects were individually assessed I began to concentrate more on me.
But this is where it boiled down to the main problem for me, what was said and what was done didn’t quite meet.
After having presented our group projects I was told that the lack of work from other group members wouldn’t reflect on me, but I think it has. I can’t help but think that the projects were assessed in the blink of an eye and those initial prejudices have stuck.
What hurt me even more was that after initial concerns with the overall size of the level, I personally explained our brief and our ideas with the new-improved layout, fairly early on in the semester and got the go-ahead, but then for some reason at the presentations we were told that it wasn’t good enough and too small. If this is the case then why weren’t these issues brought up sooner instead of just patting me on the head and sending me on my way?
I have apparently wasted hours of work on a brief that was never going to be good enough.
I also couldn’t help but notice that the main concern during the reviews was the lack of work with frequent references and comparisons to the 3rd years. I personally believe this is grossly unfair. Surely assessments should be based on the individuals capabilities and under no circumstances should comparisons to students who have 2 years more experience than us should be made, I have found the whole experience demoralising and now I am just focusing on improving my skills and planning the best-damn FMP there shall ever be :P
Although this sounds fairly rantish or possibly even rude. It is not at all intended this way. I am merely trying to keep my self going and to stay sane. These past few months have been testing for me and i have had to change as a person, but by no means am i giving up. I am learning and growing as a person for every day i am on this course and i have developed a repetoire of skills that i hope will be invaluable to me for the rest of my life. If anything, this year has taught me to keep fighting. Not to make excuses and shift the blame, not to run home and hide in the comfort of a mother's love. It has taught me how re-assess my life and instead of giving up on problems, try approaching them from a different angle.
This is not the last you have seen of this Game Art student.
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