So this week...

I actually did something productive. Not exactly what I was planning to do, but related to it. I was going to go on a modelling binge, but instead I started getting in to texturing the Blacksmith and ended up going on a texturing binge instead.

First off, I've got the blacksmith. His texture was more or less finished, but I spent a while adding a bit more detail.

His scar's looking a bit more horrible, now, and he's also got some stubble action going on. I also added a burn on one of his arms, messed up his gloves a bit and made the leather trousers a bit nicer.

The stuff for the puzzle game is looking a lot better than it did last post. You can actually tell things apart, now.

I've been avoiding doing the textures for ages, but I'm pleased with how they're turning out so far. I'll put up better screenshots when I've started importing it into UDK and have lit it properly. These are just some random shots of how it's looking in maya at the moment.

And next week I'm going to go back on track and do the work I'm actually planning on doing.

Wow

So it's been like... more than a month. I actually have been doing work though. Here's some of it.

Some more drawings from the society. I didn't go at all for the last couple of weeks, so these are pretty old by now.

 

Yeah, I got stuck with the backs of people's heads a lot that day. Moving on swiftly, I have some work on the screenwriting thing I'm doing.

I don't recall that I've said anything about it before, so I'll explain it briefly; it's a musical claymation cartoon aimed at children. In the story, the crew of a small ship named Sea Fungus are supposed to be doing their chores, but decide to play in the sun instead. Each day, they abandon their tasks and end up regretting it later. The whole thing is set to music and the narrator is talking in rhyme.

I guess it's supposed to be a lesson against procrastination. Rich coming from me with my months-between-blog-posts but never mind.

Here are the character designs;

 They are Monsoir Sack, Bandanna Penguin and Dreadlock Crocopotamus.

Monsoir Sack is more of an imaginary mascot - something along the lines of Wilson from Castaway. He's a bit of a running joke between the crewmembers, and he's used as an excuse for bad behaviour throughout the cartoon.

Anyway, the ship design.

And the first page of storyboard. I've done the rest, but there's like ten pages and I'm not scanning them all in when you can barely even see it, anyway.

Oh, and I've also modelled Bandanna Penguin in clay. Strictly speaking, I didn't need to do this. I just wanted to try clay modelling for a unit where it didn't matter how rubbish it turned out. Have some photos.

Crocopotamus and Monsoir Sack to follow.

Okay, so I've done some work on the Blacksmith. He's modelled and mostly rigged and textured, just requiring a bit of fine-tuning. Hopefully I'll have his workshop finished by the end of the week and I'll post that up, too. 

And lastly, the puzzle game. I've modelled some bits and pieces. They're all unwrapped, but not textured, so they're not to pretty to look at, but I'll put them up as proof that I've done something. Again, I hope to have all the modelling for this done by the end of the week. That's Sunday, by the way. Not Friday.

Oh, and I nearly forgot; Patrick Swayze and Rod Stewart for the mother-in-law's birthday, and a pancake with a face in it.

This week.

So, 14 images this week. Very busy. Took poor James ages to scan them. 

Anyway, first we have two random sketches. The first is a silly picture I drew while he was playing Civ V. Siam offered Arabia pearls in exchange for whales, which gave me a flashback to primary school and the whole 'one for one' thing. Which is what he's saying in the speech bubble.

The second is a weird... shrimp... thing. I dunno if shrimps actually look like that, I'm not a huge fan of seafood myself. He's kind of cute in a terrifying, spidery sort of way, I think.

 

Next, some things from Sketch Society last week. They're people who were there, and I decided to put them up so there's more pretty stuff that makes actual sense because let's face it this blog could be called lacking in that department.

The one on the right is on a manatee body and saying 'Siha'. Maybe not the best picture to have put right below my declaration of wishing I made more sense, but never mind.

I drew this just before the 'Siha' thing. If you look closely at the hair on the right, you can probably tell that this is where things started to get a bit weird.

And yet another drawing of the other half. A face-on one for once.

All right, with that done, some actual Uni work. For Advanced Visualisation we have to design a character to model and rig and animate and all of that sort of thing. Fed up of doing animals with raptor hands and birds and cutesy rodent-types, I've decided to do a Human character, this time. He's Blacksmith. Blacksmith is a huge man with big arms and a face that looks not unlike a bowl of badly mashed potato. He's also a incredibly clumsy and is always doing himself injury. He has had his leg amputated and replaced it with a solid iron peg-leg.

Despite this, he's a pretty nice guy and finds the whole thing absolutely hilarious. Here's some random art involving him, including a storyboard.

Basically, in the story he's doing his black-smithing thing, and he smells his dinner is ready. His wife comes in to tell him that dinner is indeed ready, and he decides to quickly finish what he's doing before going. When he goes to throw the thing he's working on into the quenching barrel-thing (which won't be magic morphin' in the final thing) he misses horribly and has to go pick it up. Not an incredibly interesting story, but it's just a short thing to establish his character and show him moving around.

Finally, for Advanced Interaction we've to make an interactive environment. That basically means 'small game' and I settled on a single-room gravity-defying puzzle type thing which has the character walking on the walls and exploring things. It's sort of Super Mario Galaxy crossed with any sequential puzzle game you can think of, with a bit of NOLF thrown in for good measure. 

Anyway, I made a map. It's colour coded but because my scanner gets colours mixed up it might not make an awful lot of sense to people who didn't draw the silly thing. It just details all the walls and what's on them, furniture overlap and where the character can pass from one wall to another and that sort of thing.

Anyway, that's all I got.

Assorted Things

So some relatively new things, and some quite old things from Uni last year.

I'll start off with the Next Level thing we did; I'd list what everybody did, but it has credits at the end so I really don't need to. Anyway, I uploaded it to Youtube because Blogger really didn't like it for some reason. Probably the file format or size or something. Here it is.

Another picture of the design for the mountain goat. We ended up going with the simpler cartoon-y design on Fraser's advice because this one really would've taken longer to animate, and the other one fits the environment better. But I still like the big cuddly coo-looking goat design.

Yet another picture of the other half. I think it's the first one I've ever drawn where he doesn't have a big bushy beard. The chin threw me off a little when I got down to it, but I think it turned out okay. I also did a caricature.

And next we have a quick picture of Ara. I had to bribe her with sweets to make her stay still long enough for me to draw it, though. She's going to have diabetes by the end of the year, probably. I also have a picture of Admiral Bobbery, from Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door.

And finally, I got my coursework back from last year, and decided to scan some of that in. We have the very first picture of Barbar, and then some random sketches of Barbar and the Polar Bear King.

So the last week...

Mentioned the virtual pet game in the last post; most of my time this week has been devoted to animating the following sprites;

So they're not actually that small in RL, but they're not very interesting, either. They're idle animations. The walk-cycle took a donkey's age. And it's a bit more exciting to look at, but still pretty tiny.

So I've also done some random sketches. Like a Scholar Dwarf, and the Vhussit.
Scholar Dwarf kind of speaks for himself, but a Vhussit is another creature I made up for the same game as the Sqayaqe that I also never got around to drawing until recently. A vhussit is a sort of emaciated spectral greyhound. Its mood is perpetually foul, but it loves to sing.

Hearing a Vhussit song is generally considered to be a bad omen, not unlike the scream of a banshee, but the origin of that superstition is sort of backwards. Upon hearing the song, the listener normally panics. If the Vhussit is close enough to have its song disturbed by the senseless gibbering, it's annoyed and offended by the interruption, and tears the person to peices.

If the listener escapes the Vhussit's wrath, he or she usually worries so much about their 'impending doom' that they don't pay attention to where they're going, and walk out in front of a bus or something equally dangerous.

Anyway, here's the Vhussit.

I will colour him in at some point.

Lastly; some character art for the Mountain Goat from the Next Level thing. Probably the only thing in this whole post that's relevant to anything.

That chickenscratch you can barely see basically says that I think he's creepy with the huge eyes. He looks much more goat-ish and nice with the little eyes. However, I like the smoother coat.

New stuff and stuff found.

I'm gonna do the new stuff, first.

I've never really tried pixel-art before, so I decided to have a go to pass some time. It's Baby Barbar. The other half was itching to program a virtual pet, and this is one of the sprites for his idle animation. It took ages and I really put more detail into it than was likely neccessary, given its eventual size, but I'm just playing about at the moment.

Next we have a weird creature face. I was playing around with the smudge tool in photoshop and ended up wasting forty minutes or so on it.

Working on a game with a couple of friends, and this is me figuring out the pose the Lion Tamer should take. He's a bit squint, and I'm not overly excited about that arm, but the kilt is so staying, no matter what.

And some weird eel things, and a little cartoon bird.

Finally, the old. A couple of paintings I did for Uni last year. They were originally intended for the intro to Ted's Fantastic Adventure to the Village of Halflingtown, but I didn't get around to putting it together. I keep meaning to.

Sleeping walruses. Poor Ted is excluded from the group. It's probably a good thing he's so fat from eating all those cabbages and never being allowed to play with the other walruses, otherwise he'd have frozen to death. I don't think Ted is in any position to see the silver lining, though.