Long time no....see?

Wow I can't believe how long it's been since I've last posted on here. Well to be fair it's only been a little over month, but it feels like far longer than that, things are getting pretty crazy at the moment. Lots of work, uni has started being open until 9pm, meaning I am there from 8am - 9pm most days of the week for the next 8 weeks. So I apologise in advance if I don't write for a while.

So we have an exposition over in the mailbox where we showed off a video of our game, still though I best not say anything about it, just in case.

The reason things are getting pretty hectic at the moment is that we have a lot of work to do for our game, constantly re-scoping, but it's looking promising now. Also as it's getting close to the end of the course I'm having to start working intensely on my portfolio so that I may start applying for some jobs. Hopefully come the end of the month I will have a portfolio worthy of applying for junior artist jobs.
So I've decided to work on small projects in my spare time, right now I have decided to model a pistol. I started it last night and hope to be done by the end of the weekend, obviously I don't have much time in the evenings but as I'm not getting any work at the restaurant I have more time on the weekends. Anyway this is about 1-1.5 hrs of work [though it could be less as I'm often having conversations online at the same time as I model haha]

The Old Earth

So hello again, long time no... speak?
Well I've been buried with uni work, as always, and this is going to be like this until at least the end of August. It's all good though, keeps me busy and keeps me learning so much. It's rather funny that before starting this course I had only knowledge or 3D studio max, and I liked to think I was quite good with it; but for this course I have had to learn how to use Maya for our game, which was something I was a bit sceptical about because I did not want to learn something new when there was already something I could do and could improve with. That's not to say it was a bad idea, in fact I actually love it now; besides random crashes and battling with it on a daily basis, it's actually such a powerful software with such an intuitive UI, you can tell that this was designed by an artist where Max most probably by a programmer. So as I was saying, what's funny is that now I feel I am pretty efficient with Maya, but when I try to go back into Max it all feels so alien and I feel uneasy with it. Ah pretty ironic that my views have totally turned 180 degrees.

Anyway back to this post... As you saw in my last post I am doing some side projects to boost up my portfolio. That last one still needs a lot of work as I feel it is not particularly inspiring, but nonetheless I've had to get going on this next one, so it is something I will go back to on a later date.
This current project is based on the theme 'The Old Earth'; in fact I was given a choice of 3 to go with, with the other two being 'The Alchemist' and 'The forgotten realm'. So what I decided to model is an old carrack (old sailing ship back from the days of the pirates), with most of my references coming from a particular ship named 'Roter Lowe', a Dutch vessel which was big and mighty in its day. Working this kind of project is great, and references are not only good for helping you with you models, but the research also allows you to understand what you are modelling and learn about it; and at the end of the day the reason I love to travel is because I love to learn new and exciting things, so this is a way for me to do that during those times I cannot travel...fantastic :D

So this is still a work in progress but I figured I would treat you to a couple of images to show you where this is going.
The ship is actual size and is something which could be used as an environment piece in a game as it is quite low poly [under 7000 poly at the moment], but I plan to stick it in a bottle [which I will also show you the image of so you can see how pretty it is]. Which eventually will go onto a desk full of other well detailed models, which will eventually turn out to be a desk in a captain's cabin [which the idea is that it is the cabin inside the ship which is in the bottle which is on the desk within said cabin; aaaah craaaazy, it's like inception....but with ships]

Viewport screenshot of the Roter Lowe

Render of the view of from the previous image

The Roter Lowe inside its bottle

They Landed

It's been a while but here comes a proper post again, aah finally!

I have been on an Easter break now for two weeks and despite what that usually means, time to relax and enjoy lots of food and chocolate before going back to uni, I've actually been working quite a lot [still eating lots of food though of course]. I went home for a weekend and have been working at my job and the rest of the time I have been working on a portfolio project which I have been set by my tutor.

So in this project I've been asked to create an immovable prop based on the theme 'They Landed', which can be interpreted in any way.
It must also meet the following constraints:
- It must contain no more than 2500 polygons/5000 Tris
- Must use no more than a single 2048px texture [or 4 x 1024px textures]
- The scene must be no bigger than 5m x 5m

Some of the ideas which I thought of was something about aliens landing, the moon landings, aircraft landing on a carrier, D-Day landings. So I have decided to do the project based on the D-Day landings. The scene is of a machine gun from inside a German bunker looking out with the sky in view.

I have actually just finished this project, so I here a few screenshots that shows process of my modelling, right through to the finished thing.

Overview of the scene layout

Blocked out scene view

How the machine gun's barrel is modelled

Machine gun added to the scene

Final in software render

Mental Ray render

Diffuse textures used [4 x 1024px textures]

Specular textures used [4 x 1024px textures]

Well it has been a while since I have posted on here. As you can imagine I have been very busy over the last few months with our very exciting final project. Unfortunately I cannot divulge any information for you just yet.
I have been working on some other projects on the side. My tutor has started setting us little projects we can do at home, every two weeks. This is a great idea as it allows me to keep on improving my skills [I plan to go back to 3DS Max, seeing as I work in Maya at uni, so that I will not forget how to use it].

Anyway I will keep you updated on here with how it is coming along [when I get home I will update with where I am on my current project; based on the theme 'They Landed'. I will give description and screenshots in my next post.

I would like to call on anybody who may actually be following my blog. I am doing some research on games to find out what people like and expect from games. I would really appreciate it if you would take just a moment to complete this little survey, please. [Come on, it's only 12 questions long :P ]

Click here to take the survey. Thank you

Agent 17 - The game

Soooo it's been a while, and truthfully that is because I have been on a christmas break and so have not had much to tell. I decided to wait before writting up my first post, instead of straight away since being back, and the reason for that is two-fold;
1) We have just started a new project last Monday, so it has literally only been 3 days at the time of writting this; and unfortunately I am not going to be able to tell you anything about it as this time I will be keeping it a secret.
and 2) I have been waiting for the spy game, which I have been telling you about over the past couple of months, to be published.

So here it is, the good news is that Agent 17 is now officially published and available on the App Store to download for free for the iPad:

Agent 17: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/agent-17/id494250834?mt=8

This is very exciting news for me as this is my first published game, technically I am in the industry now... and hopefully come next September I will be able to say the same but with more pride and an actual paid job on my hands.

I hope that some of you, at least, are owners of an iPad or know somebody with one and are able to download and play Agent 17. If anybody does play it I would love to hear what you have to say about it, so don't hesitate to message me or leave a comment telling me what you thought of it.