Weeks of craziness..

(week 3-5 of school)

I have been so busy that I haven't had time to make a blog post. I feel guilty about my time right now! But as a personal thing, I really want to reflect on what happened.

I finished my Drawing for Games texture/silhouette assignment. Instead of the render shading that I wanted to do, I ended up just putting flat shades onto my drawings to fill the minimum requirement of the assignment. I spent alot of time on the line drawing by re-drawing & redesigning all of my chosen concepts on paper with pencil, inking them on paper, then fixing up the lineart in photoshop.

I also spent alot of time on my 3D assignment instead of Drawing for Games, because there was a modeling crit due for my still life scene.

The still life project is over now. Overall the project was challenging, frustrating at times, fun, and a work in progress...still. I didn't pass the assignment due to bad tessellation, texturing, and lighting. I modeled just fine, just my end result did not reflect the beauty my high poly models had. I have a lot to go with texturing and high to low poly baking.

I've also come to realize that I tend to start strong in a project, then crash somewhere near the end. I should really be crashing at the beginning, if anywhere. I need to work on my timing and texturing.

Here are some pictures from the still life project "Vanitas":

And the final product:

Project had to be under 7k polygons, a total of 4096 pixels for texture, a skull, a peeled citrus, a vessel, and a cloth with recognizable folds.

I will continue to make my still life look better, but for now we are on to our next project: Realistic Environment. We had to choose an existing game so that we have a definite style we are emulating, so I choose Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Just starting it now, so progress pictures on that some time later. I am also starting concept drawings for my fantastic environment, which will (for now) be based on Bioshock.

I have some older pictures of what happened with my 1st 3D assignment, "Modular Kit Construction" and the "What happened here?" concept art.

For my modular kit, I also need to work on that when I have time (2nd priority to my Still Life, because I actually passed the modular assignment) so that it can eventually become a portfolio piece. My concept art was ok. Not my favorite, but a good first try on doing something was not really a matte painting, but kinda was.

Cruise pool deck, Modular Kit 

 What happened here?! Location + Disaster =

Abandoned coast of Hawaii, 10 years after a nuclear war.

Hawaii being rediscovered after 100 years.

What have I learned?

Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger;
more than ever hour after our work is never over.

Busy Week 2

So alot went on this week, personal and school related.

I am happy to say that my dad is doing well after experiencing some discomfort earlier in the week! I thank God always for watching over my parents. Sadly, my dog passed away recently (marked in my last post), but he will always be with me in my memories. My dad put together a wonderful frame for my words of reflection.

For my Drawing for Games class, I've developed 50 silhouettes! It was a fun process.

 

And then from 10 of those silhouettes and 5 other sketches, I came up with these!

There will be more of these silly looking characters later!

My modular project came to a completion, and it was alright for a project we were basically given a weekend to do. I learned alot of optimization skills, and experienced many mistakes that will make me more prepared on my next assignment. (Check the grid sizes first, then see if its all to scale with the player!) I will post up pictures once I update it later on this week.

Our next assignment is a 3D Still life, so some small scale details will be the main focus! Whipping the good ol Zbrush program out, and testing my sculpting skills.

You will be missed my dearest friend...

Sable

(2003-2011) 

We have been the best of friends since my early years of Highschool. He was intelligent. He was fast. And he was very small. We named him Sable because of his dark hair that was not quite black, but a very dark brown. He had a mate named Tory, who was 2x his size, and had 5 children (1 of which we kept for a while, named Tess). All of his children, even the runt of the litter, was bigger than him. He was a miniature Pomeranian.

He was a smart dog because no matter what barricade we used to keep him away from the bedrooms, he would sneak thru the smallest hole in the corner, or bounce off the gate enough times to make it fall over. He would do whatever he could to get to my room. He slept on my bed whenever I could sneak him into my room. He would hide food or pig ears in my room, and sometimes inside my shoes, because his wife was a greedy eater and eat his food. He would always listen when me or my parents called him. We trusted him outside with no leash because he was that good. He had a bad habit of peeing over anything plastic in the house. He has been to an Anime convention, and got to sleep in a hotel. He went with us almost everywhere, except into restaurants. 

He passed away 4am, Wednesday, August 32st, 2011, due to health complications. My mother was a trooper who went all the way to another city by metro train to get him to see a doctor. She was told she needed an appointment by 2 places, but one place finally took him. He had my mother at his side, and she never gave up on him. 

My dad reminded me of the movie "All Dogs Go To Heaven", and he said that Sable is definately there and will be waiting for me. I hope he has fun playing with the angels. Goodbye, Sable. I love you.