End Blog

I maintained this blog throughout my time at university, and since then I have continued working to improve my skills and capabilities using Maya, After Effects, and other software like Blender. It documents processes, research and general interesting stuff I found to be interesting, helpful, inspiring or random musings.

Have a look at my vimeo page, where I upload the content I create in doing this.

You can have a look at my showreel here, and find my whole profile here.

Model Development - Alien

I've been developing the mesh for the alien model to be used in the animation. I've made it very long because it will stand upright sort of like a snake, and needs the length to be able to curl back on itself without standing on the tip of it's tail.

I've put a dip at the bottom of the neck to accommodate for the fact that it will be looking down slightly because of it's size. There's still plenty of work to be done on it though.

Model Development - Poltergeist

The modelling for the poltergeist I'm a little more comfortable with as I've modelled a humanoid model before, and drawing from that experience, I think I'm able to make this one better. It's already looking to be much more correct in terms of anatomy, even with the adjustments to be made such as with the size of the hands.

As part of my testing process for Mudbox, I brought the models in only to find that there were problems - problems that have taken a long time to address and correct - but in the process I have developed skills in problem solving that will come into use later on. 

Model Development

This is the nightmare model, rigged with joints in it's upright posed. It is posed resembling a snake or a cobra in it's attack position, as this makes it seem threatening and dangerous.

One of the problems I had when making this was getting the joints bound and constrained correctly. At first I simply tried parenting one to the other, forgetting that I needed to constrain them. I realised this was an error when I came to see some of the joints simply vanishing after being parented, leaving them unconnected. I then tried constraining them, but they did not respond to the controllers I had set up. This is because I was still using the earlier method of parenting - in terms of which one was child to the other. I was clicking the joint as the child and then the controller as the parent, but for whatever reason, this meant the controller couldn't control the joint first. When I tried it the other way round, it finally managed to work.

I lost quite a few hours working around this problem, but overall I feel that learning the workaround for myself was ultimately progressive to my development and proficiency in using maya.

Textures / Bumps

Whilst I've dabbled in the textures and bump maps used for the environment, here are the ones for the character models.

Once the mesh was appropriately laid out in the UV texture editor it became available to paint. I prefer this much more than manually painting the details in photoshop and applying it directly, as it feels more natural to literally paint onto the model. That said, I can only wish I had more experience in it, but I'm confident that the lessons I have learned producing these models will come in later when I come to produce more.

That said, it was partially necessary to use photoshop in the production of the alien model because it took a long time to paint, and the way the polygons were arranged (a fault on my part admittedly) made it hard to paint in some areas because of the range of size in which one polygon came to play a part. For example, it was hard to paint a part of one spike because the spikes were made of only a few polygons each in total. But in photoshop I wasn't restricted.

So all in all, I've learned important lessons regarding the advantages and disadvantages concerning mudbox and painting textures, and I do feel they have helped better my proficiency in using both of the softwares.

Model Development II

I don't particularly like the modelling phase, but I like the animating. This is the poltergeist after he was given a skeleton, although at this point I was still having trouble with the controllers and so had to pose him without the use of them - which was easy enough.

The textures I had made in Mudbox worked perfectly, and binding the rig to the mesh using heat mapping - which to my knowledge is a new feature of Maya 2014, dramatically reduced the amount of weight painting necessary. In contrast to the last humanoid model I built it is much cleaner.

Though more work could have been done on the hands in the modelling, rigging and animation processes all, I knew he wouldn't be using his fingers so much - even so, his fingers are functional as independently posable extremities.

Rift Concept Art Contest: Part III

In the end, this is what I produced.

I, at least, put effort into it to warrant confidence enough to win. Unfortunately that wasn't the case, but I've since taken a moment to reflect on why.

I think it was creative enough. Having played the game, there aren't any existing two-bladed swords which I know about. A simultaneous strength and weakness it had was that it was both uncreative in it's design as it was fitting.

I had designed the sword to fit into one of the games factions, the Guardians. Throughout their gear and general aesthetics, in architecture, armour and everything else, they make use of a similar colour motif and theme. Gold, white, blue, angels, fists, wings - a sort of holy look, fitting for a faction of god worshippers. I stuck to this theme because I wanted to score full marks on the Rift-appeal, but it may have knocked down the points I scored in creativity because it wasn't anything new, or perhaps anything they had seen before.

Even so, I felt like I succeeded in that regard. Showing the artwork to family and friends, they found it hard to distinguish which was official art and what I had produced.

I also presented it on the default template that we were given and neglected the visual presentation aspect of the contest almost entirely, and only came to realize it upon seeing winning entries.

The grand prize winner was the one who did not neglect this - perhaps not such a coincidence.

The second and third place winners (after it was discovered the original second place winner was cheating by using unoriginal / not his own artwork) did the same as me, however.

This is my personal favourite sword amongst the winners - outside my own, of course. But I can perhaps see why it won. It could fit into both factions, rather than just one.

The third place sword I did not like so much, but I cannot deny it is a brilliant work of design.

After the contest, I took to the media to find out what I did right or wrong. I got some feedback from Rift on Facebook.

I also took to the game's forums to post in the relevant forum thread.

I did indeed realize that my sword would be hard to model if it was to resemble the artwork at all, and that a concept that could be more easily replicated would perhaps be more likely to win. Even so, I've learned a lot from this contest that I can apply to my work in the future, and I eagerly look forward to the next contest.

Rift Concept Art Contest Part II

Unfortunately one of the things I couldn't find out from the rules section of the contest was whether we could submit more than one application. I decided not to risk it though, nor spread out my time and attention amongst many creations.

We were given templates to work with and asked to create either a cloak, staff or sword. I wasn't all that interested in creating a cloak, simply since I find creating weapons to be far more interesting! I was originally going to opt to make a staff but instead settled on creating a sword.

I needed to reflect on the criteria I had to live up to. I do play Rift occasionally, and so I wasn't as alienated from the game and the contest as I could have been. Each entry is graded out of 10 on creativity, visual portrayal and overall Rift feel. I was content that I could capture all of these, and what I wanted to produce was already manifesting inside my head, and it was simply a matter of producing it.

I acquired a template and set to work, knowing what I wanted to make.

Rift Concept Art Contest Part I

http://community.riftgame.com/en/2014/04/02/rift-concept-art-contest/

I have decided to enter this competition. But before I got started, I read the rules, terms and conditions.

Technical:

The creation must be consistent with the ESRB’s “T” rating issued to Trion for RIFT. The creation must be submitted in a digital format (JPG, JPEG, PNG, or GIF), and may not exceed 2MB in size. The creation cannot have been submitted previously in a promotion of any kind or exhibited or displayed publicly through any means.


This is to be expected, as they want new and original work.

Content: The creation must not contain material that violates or infringes another’s rights, including but not limited to privacy, publicity or intellectual property rights, or that constitutes copyright infringement; The creation must not disparage Sponsor, or any other person or party affiliated with the promotion and administration of this Contest;
The creation must not contain brand names or trademarks other than those of the RIFT universe;
The creation must not contain material that is inappropriate, indecent, obscene hateful, tortious, defamatory, slanderous or libelous;
The creation must not contain material that promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
The creation must not contain material that is unlawful, in violation of or contrary to the laws or regulations in any jurisdiction where photograph is created.

Similarly, the same standard rules. What I had hoped to find was this - the terms and criteria on which the creations are assessed and evaluated.

Eligible Entries will be judged by a panel of Trion representatives, which shall consist of Trion’s Concept Art Lead and Executive Producer, and members of RIFT’s Art Team, according to the criteria set forth below, and whose decisions are final and binding in all respects. The panel of Trion judges will award each Entry a number of points based upon the following 30 point scale: 0-10 points for creativity; 0-10 points for presentation and visual portrayal; and 0-10 points for overall RIFT look and feel (the “Trion Scale”).

The Entrant whose Entry receives the highest number of points on the Trion Scale shall be the Grand Prize Winner, the Entrant whose Entry receives the second-highest number of points shall be deemed the Second Place Winner, the Entrant whose Entry receives the third-highest number of points shall be deemed the Third Place Winner, and all other Entrants whose Entries receive honorable recognition shall be deemed a Runner-Up Prize Winner (each a “Winner,” and collectively, the “Winners”). In the unlikely event of a tie, Trion’s representatives shall break the tie in their sole discretion.

With these rules in mind, I know what the criteria is and I feel confident I can produce something good.

Kingdom Come; Deliverance

A game that I found on kickstarter a while back that caught my attention, called Kingdom Come; Deliverance, proves the power that people-powered fundraising can have. Whilst games like Star Citizen are more renowned for demonstrating this quite recently, this game has my interest as a high fantasy setting and for it's realistic combat system. All in all it looks like an exciting game.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1294225970/kingdom-come-deliverance

The developers are working with martial artists to capture the most realistic combat sequences which they wish to implement in the game. It seems quite similar to the combat found in Chivalry; Medieval Warfare, but the game promises an exclusive system based on reverse kinetics. It includes a class system of sorts that allow you to define how or who you wish to play as. A large, open world with open field battles and castle sieges, and a dynamic ability to interact with the world through activities like hunting, forging weapons and building character relationships, make this seem like a game worth keeping an eye on.

The game promised to include other features depending on how much they were able to raise in their campaign.

This too, highlights the potential of crowd sourced funding.

The development team is set in Prague and so they are able to borrow inspiration from their local area, as it has plenty of old castles and medieval architecture from which they can draw authenticity in their sources of inspiration.

The game does not intend to be a high fantasy setting though, indeed it comes across as being realistic and gritty. No elves and magic, but all the knights, armour, war and political intrigue of Game of Thrones.

But this part seems pretty awesome too.

If I'm not mistaken, this means that we'll be able to implement our own content in the game in the form of animation and clothing - which despite only being a mod to the game, could be a way of demonstrating onesself on a professional level by having your work inside a game somehow. This could be shared and prove very beneficial if it becomes popular - as a popular game mod under your belt is something that could only do to compliment your skillset.

Banished

A simple looking game with immensely complex systems and variables in place, Banished has kept me occupied for many hours - sometimes overnight whilst I have been completely caught up in the moment. The objective is simple enough - build a town, and thrive. Easier said than done?

Perhaps so. It took me many tries to get my first town right. I wasn't building houses, so children weren't moving out and populating - meaning my first several villages consisted of the original villages surviving long into old age and dying off, leaving an empty ghost town. It wasn't a great start to my career as god over the tiny populace.

To make things worse, I couldn't gather enough food. Children died of starvation and from the cold and I couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible. Eventually though, I got my act together and learned the trick to cultivating a successful town and raising a happy and healthy population within the game. The reward is to simply maintain that state throughout gameplay.

The idea is that you start off with a group of exiled travellers to restart their lives in a new land. You start with only the clothes on their backs and a cart of supplies from their homeland. The trials are surviving winters with warmth and food - but cutting down wood to make firewood means reducing the habitat of local game such as deer, resulting in less food. Also, cures for new diseases can only be found from forests which have been around for long enough.

Wandering nomads may wish to join the town, but may introduce new diseases from far off lands. It's up to you to carefully manage the town's populace; who does what job, keep them fed and healthy, and deal with catastrophes such as livestock infections or tornadoes. Success or failure falls down to resource management.

The game was developed by Shining Rock Software, a one man studio consisting of Luke Hodorowicz. He has done a fantastic job in balancing the game. It can only be admired, from my viewpoint, and I recall even Blizzard developers tweeting about the impressive feat.

I've since learned the ropes behind the game and love the idea behind it. It's relaxing to play and you can easily invest hours into it (well, once you learn how to prevent children dying, that's never fun).

Impressions: Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online

Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online are the two latest triple-A MMO games that have been released, or in Wildstar's case, will soon be released.

This is a pretty exciting time as it means that once again there is competition in the MMO genre. It isn't the easiest thing to boot up a new MMO; but these two are promising contenders.

That said, I didn't think it was very smart of Zenimax to not only set the release price of the game so high, but also to include special editions that meant those who paid more money could have more advantages - a mount, increased experience gains, and an exclusive race. I thought the point of a pay-to-play subscription based game such as this was that you got all the content inclusive, and there were no 'premium rates', so to speak. This seems almost like a blatant money grab, as the people who will now be paying X amount a month, the same as everyone else, aren't all on the same level. I don't believe a whole new race is a cosmetic deal, which is what I wouldn't mind, e.g something that wouldn't really have much impact.

In Warcraft for example, you can buy mounts. But it doesn't mean you can use them earlier than anyone else, and there are still plenty of cool mounts you can get in-game. It's entirely optional. With this however, players might feel that the best option or most efficient option is the one that costs the most, as that effectively gives them more game to play. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Wildstar at least, is looking up to be much more promising. Having played both in beta, I much prefer Wildstar. It's a little whackier, and it's stylised graphics have an appeal all of their own that won't become dated as quickly as ESO's will, and altogether seems more innovative. It might be, however, that my PC just couldn't handle ESO at it's intended settings (indeed it technically didn't even meet Wildstar's minimum requirements), and so I wasn't really able to make an accurate assessment of the games of the time.

Having seen ESO play on a quicker computer and having given it another go, I do like it and would buy it, but I still feel cheated by the pre-order system. I was almost certainly going to buy Wildstar a little while ago, but I haven't yet for whatever reason.

Wildstar, developed by Carbine, developed a series of videos in which they share information about the game's setting. It was the animation in these videos that drew me to the game.

Old Speedpaints

These are two speed paints I did, each of which was produced in under half an hour.

The first one was on the theme of 'Bat out of Hell'. Naturally, I thought of a Hell-esque environment and bat-like creatures flying about. The second was produced on the theme of snow.

I don't like what I produce in a short amount of time, or at least I don't like how I approach producing something in a short amount of time. I dedicated too much time to being meticulous with detail, producing exact shapes and fine details instead of being rough. For example, I took far too long producing the bamboo, and it would have looked more realistic anyway if I had just been more rough and quick and not as symmetrical. I didn't have time to produce a forest, and so they look strange by themselves. I wasn't able to do much at all with the snow either; in fact I screwed up on the layering which meant that the bamboo doesn't look effectively partially buried in the snow.

I'm happier with the bat out of hell picture, but still not too pleased at how I approached it. I could have been a little more thumb-naily with the bat and dedicated more time to getting different shades and colours in the mountains and lava.

That, and I've noticed I use a little too much black in most of my artwork, and I could substitute that for various shades of grey if nothing else, that would better allow me to represent the play of light in the picture.

Mark Ferrari Pixel Art

http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

This pixel art by Mark Ferrari is brilliantly done. It cycles through different times of the day, and I enjoy looking at it. But you can also see how Mark has worked with a limited amount of pixels to create an intense amount of detail, and it is through studying artist's work like Mark's that I hope I can get a better grasp of colour and apply it to my own work.

These are nothing short of amazing to me. More than likely photographic references are used. It makes use of colour cycling, used in some of the earlier console games in 8 / 16 bit systems. They remind me somewhat of the old Guilty Gear stage background. Most of the images make use of water as a moving component, though there are some where the water comes in the form of rain.

Mark created these between 1987 / 2010 for backgrounds in games for desktop and mobile phone use.

Even so, whilst I don't expect I'll create something like this myself, I think a lot can be learned by looking at the way Mark uses colour - in the waves, rocks, trees - in everything. In particular, you can tell where the source of light is in all the scenes, and there is a stark contrast in the colours used that help portray this.

Drawing Anatomy

Another series of guides to drawing, this time focusing on an anatomy. I can't find the artist to credit them unfortunately, but I find all of them quite useful - at least, all but the very last. Not that I don't find the last one useful too, but I immediately learned something from all the others. Especially since I usually can't find myself accurately drawing hands and feet unless I devote a disproportionate amount of effort and time compared to the rest of the body. I also like how the differences in clothing are highlighted depending on tightness or bagginess, as that wasn't something I took into consideration previously.

Brushes

Here are some of the custom brushes I've been using for a while.

Some of them are ones I have made such as the mountains, whereas others like the hair have been downloaded. Whether I download new brushes or not mostly comes down to necessity - whether I feel like I need it or not. Rather than use a brush to achieve a certain effect, I would like to learn how to create that effect without the use of a specific brush. That said, it is more efficient to use a brush sometimes, and I don't like turning a blind eye to efficiency.

I think I have stayed true to the promise I made myself a year ago about making more use out of custom brushes, but I have also learned the dangers of relying on them. Instead, I have learned to use them as a supplement to my artwork, but not as a means of creating my actual artwork. They are a means to end, but not a means to fill in the blanks.

Character Design

In producing the practical work that tied into the written work of my dissertation, I produced several characters from different initial character ideas, and I liked the way I approached it and thought I'd share the thought processes behind it and how I think it has lead to me improving.

Knowing at the beginning only that I wanted a female character in a dress, I started out with a rough silhouette. I basically erased line-art where necessary to make changes to test ideas in the clothing. This went from having puffy sleeves, to elbow length gloves, to shortened sleeves - and by this point I decided I liked the long sleeves the most. I also toyed around with the general trim and design of the dress - as each design gives a different aesthetic and appeal.

After I had settled on that it was a matter of playing around quickly. Because I was working efficiently with layers, it meant it was an easy case of selecting the colour and opening up the colour editor to make it brighter, or darker, or to change the colour entirely. I could produce several different versions and stack them next to each other to compare. Ultimately, because I was using a brush with a lower opacity in order to get the colours I wanted in the first place earlier, it means you can see the other versions of the character behind the one at the front, but that is an easy fix to remember for next time.

I took the design I was happiest with and added additional detail - creases, additional line art and shading, more colour for depth, and then finally add facial features. I could take it even further by experimenting with facial features too, but I was quite happy with the results I had and didn't feel the need to experiment further as I had captured the essence and soul of the character I wanted already.

This became an easy and quick way to design characters for me which I think I will carry on into the future - in fact, I think some of the things I have learned in producing designs this way can be applied to environments, too. I could change the colour of the sky to reflect the time of day or the weather, or the colour of the water in a lake or an ocean setting, and many other variables.

Blizzard Model Development Video

Blizzard recently released a video which was inclusive of some detail into how they produce their models. Most of it is nothing new as they work basically with the same techniques I have learned, but it was interesting and reassuring to see one of my favourite games companies using methods I am familiar with. You can see the use of particle effects with the model here which at first I didn't understand, and was somewhat overwhelmed by the apparent amount of controllers present around the model. But otherwise, it was interesting to see the behind-the-scenes of a model I'm quite familiar with.

They also touched on texturing, using the same methods they use for the character models.