Before I go home.

Laying out some pages in the library.  Writing out what I'm going to say before I get here was the best thing I could have done.  I've done a page in an hour, which is actually pretty good!

Not showing that yet because I want some feedback from my tutor before I unleash it.

Instead, here's this guy:

Yup.  I've drawn out another Finn from Adventure Time but I forgot before I'd sorted this out to post.  So I'll post him next time.

This guy is actually from another game I've been trying to create.  It's been fun and I can't wait to give it more attention when I've handed all this Masters work in.

Home time.

Peace.

Sketches! Part I.

The fact there's an A3 scanner here means that I cut my scanning time in half.  I am very grateful for that.

Here are four pages from my sketchbooks.  Untouched after scanning, so pardon the scribbles and 'bleh' drawings.  (Whenever I'm drawing something and it's not going well at all, I scribble through it and write 'bleh' next to it.  Then I forget about it forever.)  Also, the mess in the top corners of the pages are places I've unclogged the end of my pen.  No-one likes a clogged pen.

Here they are; roughs for a little book I'm putting together:

People and satellites.

Satellites and screens.

Notes from a completely different game I'm working on.

And notes for the book I'm putting together.

Borders for the book, layout ideas and illustrations for the book.

City layout and 'bot bits.

Box ideas and level layout.

There will be more posts to come; I can assure you.  These are 6 scans out of 43...

Now to edit some of them!

Peace.

Scanners.

Never seen the films.  I just need to scan in so many sketchbook pages that I think I'm going to have to use both of the scanners in the room.

That is all for now.

Peace.

Models!

I have had a great deal of help from a couple of friends in making some models for me for my masters.

I am not the quickest, most effective modeler there is.  I can get things done, but it takes longer than I have to do.  And I love it, but going so slowly and having to learn with pretty much every shape I have to add takes a while.

So asking for help is what I've had to do.  I don't see it as a weakness - I see it as learning how things work in industry.  If I'm making a game, I alone am not responsible for designing, modeling, texturing, etc.  I do one of those things.  Other people in whatever team I find myself in are doing other parts of the production, so I see outsourcing, if you will, as a necessary part of learning how to work in the real world.

The two guys that have helped me so much are John Brierley and Phil Clark.

John is a guy who I went through university with and he's been a huge help.  He's modeled one of the main characters for the game - The SpEngineer:

You've seen this guy before - I posted him a little while ago.  I wanted to show you again!  You can see more of John's work here - check it out; it's great!

Phil is a guy who worked with a good friend at this company.  They've done a couple of really nice games and it was a privilege to have him do a little work.  Here are the two models he's done for me so far:

An antlered toucan from some of the designs I've drawn out.  It was my favourite of a dozen or so designs.  There are a few more that I've drawn out and it'll be nice to see them realised, but for now this is amazing!

And this guy is one of the bad guys.  A lovely mix of a cicada and an angler fish.  It's intended to be one of the bigger animals of the game and the lure coming off it's head is going to look like an artifact, so that the player goes to collect it; triggering a video that sees the creature here rise out of the ground and attack the player.  It's one of a few 'lure' creatures that I've designed and I'm pretty happy with it.

It's been incredible seeing some of my drawings come to life in 3D.  I have one or two stages to go and hopefully soon I'll see this come to life even more in Augmented Reality!  I can't wait!

As for today, I'm going to be writing our a few more rules for another game I've got going on and draw some more things up for this one.

Also, something's happened to my back and I can't really...  you know...  stand up.  So there's that.  Drawing it is, right?

Right.

Peace.

Stormclouds.

Like a giant wave crashing;

Such a beautifully terrifying sight.

A cloud breaking in slow, silent might.

A Nimbostratus the foam,

Mare's Tail the spray.

Imaginary titans of ships groan, gargantuan sailors pray

As their vessel sways and tumbles atop the coming storm.

To and fro' the boat will go;

Forever sailing the skies.

It's bow forging ahead into the heights

For a hundred thousand days.

Picture wrangler.

It's that time of the year.  It comes around fairly often, but this time it's a little more important.  I'm in the rather lengthy and stressful process of rounding up all of my pictures, ideas, designs and models as I look forward to getting back into uni tomorrow and getting everything set out before me.  And then deciding what to do with it.

Here's one of many to come:

It's been a blast and I can't wait to keep doing more and more.

Peace.

I'm still here!

So the past couple of weeks have seen my wifey and I move house and then work as much as possible to pay for said house.  Not bad, but it means I've been having to squeeze in the drawing time, which is not my favourite thing.  I like having a full day of it.  I had a great morning of it this morning, actually.  It was nice to sit down and not have to worry about getting ready for work or anything like that.

But I digress.

Over the past couple of months, my friend John Brierley has been modelling a character of mine.  The modelling and texturing is all done - now he said he's going to rig and animate it - a HUGE sacrifice of time and something that I am so very grateful for.

Here he is:

How amazing is that?!  He made a crosshatch filter, too, since that's how I draw pretty much everything.  I love it.

With this, I'm going to put it into a programme and use it as my character example for the prototype that I'm working on.

I'm excited now.

Peace.