Hmmm

So it's been ages, mostly been working on group project stuff.

First, the kismet stuff for my game which is all... spaghetti-ish.

And after some deliberation I decided  to put the blacksmith animation up, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UHY2-2DPSM

It's just a playblast, so the video quality won't be amazing.

Game.

Alright, so I finished the Advanced Interaction game ages ago, but I couldn't publish it. Finally managed. Don't know what the problem was or why it randomly started publishing just fine,  I'm just glad it works, now, so I don't have to look at UDK any more. Later I'll upload some pictures of my Kismet for anybody who's interested.

Here it is; http://www.zshare.net/download/84924220958ff1e1/

Download the installer, install it. You'll need to turn off bots and the time-limit in the settings before you play, and pick the map called '0901906_FinalGame' or whatever it's called. You press the enter key to use stuff and the escape key to get out of message boxes. And seriously, click everything. Use the walls to move between levels.

More paintings

Got sick of constantly editing the last post, so I'm putting more paintings up on this one.

Just more pictures to decorate the level. I'll keep adding them as I go along.

 Another painting. One more to go.

So it has been a while

But here's a picture of a bird for now. I'm totally going to make a proper post... probably next week ish. For the last while I've been doing things that aren't pretty. Like rigging.

 

And also a tiny little picture from an ink pot texture.

And another bird. I'm just kind of adding stuff as I go along.

So I'm just going to keep editing as I go along. 

Here's an old man.

And a landscape based on a photograph of Oban. 

All these things are for Advanced Interaction; making an environment to explore. 

The first two are designs and motifs on props, the second two are paintings that hang in the office where my level is set.

With all the edits, this is kind of turning into a proper post. Anyway, I have a few screenshots of my Advanced Interaction game. So far, none of the triggers are set up, but everything is imported. I'm only missing a couple of paintings that I'll add later.

I'm pretty happy with how it's ended up looking. Suitably disorientating.

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.