This project we simple as I was tasked to go out and study Leicester once again.
I decided to take a different approach to my normal one, and instead I got out my watercolors and acrylics. Its unbelievable how rusty I felt when I started off, so this is my first study, which is very wonky buy I was more concentrated on gaining a grasp of the paints than anything.
I used white acrylic to add the water details on top of the sculptures and fountain. It sort of worked though I should imagine had I only used watercolors I would not have got away with that trick!
Pencil Study, Lion fountain
This was my last watercolor study, and this time I used only watercolors. I wanted to try and paint in a process that meant every brush stroke was permanent and I had to mean it.
"Graveyard"
This brief dabble into traditional paints was the first time id done it in years and it felt good. I'm definitely going to be doing more of this, and try to improve my accuracy with a brush, use of colour and line work.
For this visual design project I was asked to design an interior, more specifically a bar of some kind. As it followed on the footsteps of our group project, thought it was great timing as I could use this project as an opportunity to design and Interior for my Bear Tavern. Which was something I had not done but really wished I could have.
I immediately began doing a little bit of research and generated a mood board to start out with.
I then use my Tavern models size and scale as a guide to building a floor and wall plan for the ground floor where the Taproom would be. I then began sketching up some idea's for the layout of the room. Key features I needed to consider were things like the bar needing enough space, and there needing to be a staircase leading to the upper floors somewhere there.
I settled a idea and drew a more detailed version to use as a guide when building my interior.
From this I then generated a whitebox where I used lights inside of 3ds Max to get a feel for the lighting. I also re-used some elements from my tavern assets as it was pointless to redo work I'd already done to the same design. The rest I modeled and unwrapped fresh for texturing.
Whitebox
Final Image
As you can see there above, is the final renders and presentation shot. Some of the details in the scene were hand painted in, such as the painting over the bar, and the bears skull trophy. The overall interior layout makes sense to me, and If I were to make this an actual environment, I'm sure it would work well. In the end I'm quite pleased with it, and I wouldn't mind going for a drink there... looks cosey ;)
For this masters study I was keen to research and discover a old artist that would be new to me and hopefuly by studying their work I could learn something new.
I decided I wanted to look into classical fantasy paintings or self portraiture. Ive always found self portraits interesting because its intriguing to study how the artist chooses how to capture themselves on the canvas.
Naturally I got online, began sourcing images and collating them in mood boards about each particular artist.
I discovered Courbet's work when searching for classical self portraiture. I really liked the contrast of light and shadow in his paintings. Something about the held a certain drama and mystery that others I found simply lacked. So I decided to study his work by emulating one of his painting with my own self portrait.
At first I was keen on doing the top right painting, but I tried to emulate his pose and found it very un natural. Too much exaggerated twisting of the neck in relationship to his shoulders which I found very uncomfortable. So in the end I settled on the bottom right one, which was an earlier self portrait I believe. Im glad I chose this one because it had even more drama than the first and the pose was slightly more manageable though three times as complex!
I took a picture of myself and began in digital studying from it and Courbet's work to produce this:
As you can see I focused on gaining the values first the worked into detail. Lastly adding colour on a colour layer.
Final image- A self Portrait in the style of Gustave Courbet
I was quite pleased with the final Image, though I would have liked to give it more attention. Sadly I was out of time and needed to move on. As far as self portraits go for me, I think this is by far my best.
I think its fair to say for myself, that I haven't had the year I set out to have. I've learned a lot technically, with 3D and new software... however, during these three terms, I wouldn't say I'm pleased with the amount I've progressed in honing my skills artistically. Partly due to lack time invested in practice, and partly due to lack of motivation. Not willingly mind you.
Its hard to tell where exactly I am at because I feel like I'm still waiting for the second your to begin, and yet I'm going away soon to be returning on my third year. So what does that mean for me? What do I need to do in order to ensure next year will be the best year for me to learn and progress, to make the most of my university education and the time I'm paying for.
I need to treat this year like it was a bad dream I woke up from and forgot. Just a minor blip on the timeline.
What do I want to get out of my time here at university? I want to take everything I can from it, use the structure to teach myself routine and strict time management. Procure connections that I might otherwise never get. Make friends that I will carry with me into my career and who will prove invaluable allies for artistic guidance and career support. Ultimately I want to use this soon to be rare time, to see who I can push myself to become as fast as I can do it.
How am I going to up my game and show everyone and myself what I'm really capable of? Those are the easy questions ill be asking myself and answering over the next few weeks. Because I plan to make use of this summer in a way that Ive never done before. Ive always treated holidays as an escape, a time to relax and avoid the drudgery of work. But by doing this I usually lose sight of my enjoyment in art and forget about it...
That cant happen this summer. If there is one positive thing to carry forth with me from this years experiences, is this. I never want to do it like this again! Somewhere along the line I lost sight of me, and I became something else. Now its time to find the old me back, and that means finding some strict discipline. Shit gets real next year, so really this summer is my last chance to prepare for for it. If I want to prove myself then I am going to have to work harder to ensure that.
That is what I'm excited for, because I feel like up until now I've been stuck in a mental traffic jam, unable to free myself and speed on ahead. My ambition was somehow lost along side my sense of self being. That's what happens if you neglect yourself and you fall prey to worries and stress.
I don't really know now where it is I want to go, but that's because I'm still pulling the pieces of me back together. Pretty soon ill be back working and ill know where I'm headed.
So for me this year was James performing at 20% I cant wait till next year, a second chance to redeem myself and hopefully secure my future in this industry. If everyone has to have a bad year, a really bad year... well I'm gad I had mine now and not later. Now I can bring it when it matters most and that's a promise I'm making to myself and those who've supported and believed in me along the way! No more Mr "that" guy.
Back to Mortal Engines, I wanted to cover the transition progress I made from a high poly digital sculpt to the re modeled low poly version. Again this process was new to me so I knew it might take some time but at least I would learn a lot from it. I Took my 45M poly sculpt of the character and "decimated" it to a 4.5 million poly version so I could bring it into 3ds Max without it exploding! lol
Luckily that part worked and I was able to start building the low poly topology over the surface of the high poly mesh. The whole time I needed to be very aware of the density of my topology because If I went over budget ( 9k) then I would be in trouble and need to cut out geometry. polygon by polygon eventually I finished the whole mesh and I was quite pleased with the overall density of specific zones and the cleanness of it.
Here are some screenshots to show the under 9k model
Front
Side
Back
So my next step was baking the high poly details onto a the low poly model. This is done with a Normal Map, and all i needed to do was create a cage that covered all the high poly details and the low poly geometry, then the rendered did its thing. What you can see here is a direct comparison of the high poly and the low poly using the normal map It generated. I learned a great deal during this process because it took many repeats to get it as close to perfect as I could
At this final stage, I needed to paint the texture maps for my character and give him some colour details. unfortunately this stage was not fully completed so what you see here is a WIP of the texture. I used 3D coat to paint directly only the model, sort of like painting a warhammer model. I really hope to finish this as soon as I have time.
This project was my first proper character project and thanks to all the complex processes involved I learned a great deal and look forward to doing more character art! ;)
I believe this question of "How do we know in advance what skills will be needed in the future, since we can’t know the future?" extends way back the the start of Education. Every tier of the education system currently I'm place today is based and built upon the one below. Even though the step between high school and university is considered a large, its never so big that any person cant handle if the work hard.
The problem lies with the education system itself. Every year it goes through reforms and changes that might slowly make things better or worse, mostly depending on luck. But it never evolves into what it should be for the current and coming generations. So what I mean is, pretty much nothing I was offered as teaching in school, prepared me for the path I eventually through my own decisions. Usually kids like me who liked art, were told that they should find an academic subject they can do because they wont find a job in art, or if they try it will be very difficult and not much money. That's a really bad misconception and one teachers shouldn't put across to their students.
Imagine if creative arts had as much funding and focus early on in the education system as other subjects like science and math. what kind of first years would we be seeing in interviews on this course if the core fundamentals were passionately taught to budding art students all the way back to when they can first begin to understand it, which is early on...
I watched a brilliant Ted Talk recently when researching this, by Sir Ken Robinson on the subject of the education system and its structure, background, why its here and why we need to get rid of it for something newer and better. he's a brilliant speaker but more importantly he raising some inspiring points. If you haven't seen it then I cant recommend it enough.
This next one is a slightly broader and lengthier talk, brilliantly paired with some artistic flare. Again worth checking it out, if not for the talk then just for the brilliant drawing. But it is relevant.
If that was the case and Creative arts were valued and encouraged early on, Game art tutors wouldn't need to worry about covering the fundamentals and could focus on training software knowledge and a level of adaptability that prepares them for the future. Most Importantly I think the courses should be dynamic and always able to change quickly so they stay current.
But with the education system stuck how it is for now, how do game educators train and bring out the best in their art students to prepare for the future of the games industry, when we don't know what the future of that industry will be? Well I know that this course doesn't teach Animation, but the same question applies to those courses, or really any media arts courses. A lot of schools take a very software-heavy approach to their teaching
but with technology changing so fast and hardware/software growing by
leaps and bounds, it can be really hard to teach something current and
expect it to still be relevant 3 or 4 years later. So as we know that you as a art tutor only have 3 years to skill those students, how best use that time? I think learning the software is important, but mastery over shouldn't be the main focus.
Enough time should be given early on for the students to develop their fundamentals. As Chris always says, "They are the foundation on which all other skills will stand" That translates into technology, and its proven all too often when I see people I know pick up Zbrush or 3ds max even and they try to model a simple shape, but cant quite get it right. its that basic lacking of understanding that's holding them back and making it so much harder for them.
I think that you could give a great traditional artist, who has some technology know how a new creative program to master like Zbrush, and regardless of how little he or she may know about the software, it will take them only a matter of days to get to grips with it. However, if you take someone who has never really practiced their traditional skills and learned their fundamentals, then try to give them the same program. No matter how hard the try, they will never be as competent as the first artist.
This Feng Zhu talking about the importance of fundamentals, and he draws a line between two ways of studying.
I guess like everyone else, I thought that if someone said you had talent, then it was another way of saying, you are special, you were born to do what it is your doing. Because Talent is god given, and its a sign of direction, of purpose. Most of all, that talent is a rare thing and should not be wasted. So what do you do if everyone is telling you, you've got talent in that subject but you don't like it... must be a tough choice to make whether to listen to them or listen to yourself.
So what is Creativity? Lets start with the textbook definition: - theabilitytotranscendtraditionalideas,rules,patterns,relationships,orthelike,andtocreatemeaningfulnewideas,forms,methods,interpretations,etc.;originality,progressiveness,orimaginationWhat exactly is talent? - aspecialnaturalabilityoraptitude - acapacityforachievementorsuccess: ability Right.. that didn't help at all. This is gonna take some deeper thinking. That means videos if I can find them, reading if not.
Interesting short documentary on this topic, probably the best I could find and its worth a watch.
Maybe when assessing what talent is or what creativity is, it would be helpful to ask some of the people we as a society believe have both in abundance.
"Most" people would say that Steve Jobs wasn't ordinary, that he was gifted with extraordinary creativity and talent to inspire others. But that isn't the case. He was just a very hard working man, who knew how to make the most of the skills he had learned in his time here.
This is a great video, will smith is one of my favorite actors and it isn't because of his skill at acting. its who he is outside of film. You'll see.
What I've learned is that they paint a very different picture on the myth of Talent and creativity, as opposed to it being something you are born with and that will stay with you gifting you for the rest of your life. My parents and friends always told me I was talented, this and that, and sure enough I seemed to do well in art. But It was never handed to me, and I never found it easy to focus, or easy to really set my teeth and plow through the work. Really when I look at the difference between myself and my bother or sisters is that I chose to peruse art, and I chose to invest many hundreds of hours in that craft. It isn't sent to you on the talent train. You may start out with a natural affinity to something, but its raw, its untrained, and therefor useless, unless you invest the hours to build and train that skill so you can use it. The more you work at it, the better you are likely to become, leave talent out of the equation. Its just a perk that helps get the wheels rolling sometimes, but in the end its up to you to turn the engine on and drive into your future.
I guess I've never really thought too hard on, or research into the structure of the current games industry that I'm looking to find a career in. Me being very open to idea's and possible career changes and feeling in no rush, I just didn't see the importance of it until now. I think what I've learned from this year, is that I need to take hold of the reigns and start directing myself somewhere. This lack of "focus" is likely a bad thing and although I know its never a good thing to narrow your field of view too early, at least if I've scanned out the terrain before hand I can feel safer in what ever decision I make on what direction to follow.
So lets take a look at the current skeleton of the games industry by checking out a few of my personal favorite studios and how they structure their creative workforce.
Skyrim development team
"Bethesda Game Studio's", developer for "Bethesda Softworks", is one of my all time favorite game studio's; mostly for the A class portfolio of RPG's that they have thrown at the world of gaming over the years. That's just my personal interest, but if you take one of their most recent titles in the hugely successful Elder scrolls Franchise: "The Elder Scrolls Five: Skyrim", and look at what it took to produce that game compared to games to games 10 years ago, the difference it huge.
Todd Howard, game director for Skyrim, stated that a team of nearly 100 people worked on skyrim, which is 30 more than were recruited to work on Fallout 3 which was another epic title, merely three years prior.
Go back even farther to 2002, when Bethesda released "Morrowind" the team that worked on that title numbered a mere 35. Ive played all titles, and neither seems larger or more in depth. They all have brilliant soundtracks, so what are all the new people needed for?
Morrowind development Team
That's a triple increase in team size in just under 10 years. The father back you go you see the same trend, right back to the days when a game could be made single handed by anyone with programing knowledge and a computer. Those days seem far and distant now, as studies have shown that typically a game will take roughly 2 years to build with a large team of people. There are those who beat the trend, like with the Indie game movement that's grown over the past few years. We've seen a shocking number of new small developers spring up spitting out there offerings to the gaming community. Some of them being huge successes like Bastion in 2010, which went on to win awards. It was produced by a team of 7 which is tiny by today's standards however, if you go back another 8 years to the release of The Elderscrolls Two: Arena, they had a development team of of a similar number...
Arena Development Team
I wish I could find a record of exactly "who is employed doing what" in their studio but right now I cant. So its perhaps best If I look at a general guide to the likely roles available in the current games studios when it comes to designing and making a game.
There are many different job roles within any given field in the games Industry, Here is an overview of the general fields of work involved in a team like the one that works at Bethesda game studios.
Game design Art & animation Programming Audio Quality assurance Production management and Publishing And finally - Organizational management.
A couple of those fields may be relevant to me, those being Game Design and Art & animation. From what I've read in research, I don't think the others are relevant to my own personal skill and goals so ill ignore them.
Game design is a field that I became interested in years back, before I knew anything about how jobs in the games industry were divided. All I thought was that I had some great Ideas and one day I want to have the ability to turn those idea's for games into a reality. Essentially that's what Game designers do because not only do they decide what a game consists of and how it plays, but they often are responsible for the games idea generation and creating the pitch for publishers. Its also one of the more varied of roles because as a Designer you need to be able to communicate all aspects of the game to the other team member's. In today's industry, larger game titles can require more than one designer for specific area's simply because of the scale of things. An example of this would be spreading out responsibility for level designs between the team.
Some jobs titles this area would likely include are titles like: Lead designer, Game designer, Graphic designer, Script editor, Level editor, Illustrator, Storyboard Artist, GUI designer, Map builder and Script writer.
Right now, I'd say I'm looking more closely At the kind of job titles that fall under Art and animation. Artists are obviously responsible for generating all the art that makes up the game world. Whether that be 2D, 3D or conceptual design work leading up to it. Where as the Animators are responsible for giving movement to that work, for example a game character. usually the Artists never have to worry about rigging or animation, so its the animators job to take that character model from the artist and give it a skeleton from which they can animate movements, bringing the character to life.
Some of the job Titles that exist within this field are: Art Director, Creative Manager, Lead Artist, Concept Artist, Environment Artist, 3D modeler, Animator, Artist (general) , Technical Artist, and PreVis Artist. Of those titles, the jobs that I would instinctually say that I want to be a concept artist, because to me that used to sound like "I get to draw what I like how I like" But since then ive learned a lot about what it really mean to be a concept artist having sat in on talks from course graduate and concept artist at Codemasters, Mitch Small. Also I've looked into it online but I'm not sure yet where I stand. I think id I'd had a better year like I set out to have this year, I would be more grounded and know where I'm going. This is an interesting talk about Game design, and hits home with a lot of points I feel strongly about.
If you fancy a shorter summary, then check this out -
Right now I'd say that I'm looking to enter in as an artist, doing what I can to get a foothold then from there aim to where I think I'd like to be which is Lead Artist, and eventually Art Director. I seem to have a good eye and a good sense for when things look right or wrong in an image or model, especially when looking at other people work, and I believe once Ive trained my skills enough, then ill be in a position to lead the visual style of the team and help other artist out with their work, which is something I enjoy. Still undecided...
As a kid I never really had much exposure to games consoles or PC growing up. So whenever I compare my experience to others, there usually a sizable gap in my gaming history.
Funnily enough talking about interaction and design within games technology is bringing back some old memories of the few gaming experiences I had growing up in America during the mid to late 1990's. What I remember most were the controllers. I remember my friends dad was into pc gaming, he had a joystick and a couple of games, one of them was mech warrior 2.
I did a little bit of research to see if I could find what joystick it
was, and I believe it was the 'Quickshot sky commander QS202 joystick PC' At the time this seemed super advanced looking. And actually, Its virtually the only time I've ever used a joystick on a game outside an arcade.
Mech Warrior 2 was a solid game for starters, at least to me with no gaming experience, and I had never used a joystick before so needless to say, I found it pretty tough, not very intuitive to just pick up and play.The only other games controller I remember using was the NES pistol for "Duck Hunt".
One of the neighbors kids had a NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and I got to play on it one day. I remember thinking that gun controller was pretty awesome, and for a kid like me who never used technology but was used to playing with water pistols nearly 24-7, it was very intuitive if just a little clunky. But with really only one function, point and shoot, how can you get it wrong?
Obviously I cant really compare "Duck Hunt" to "Mech Warrior 2" but whats clear to me is that as a 7 year old kid, I couldn't really get my head around the joystick, but the simpler more intuitive design of the gun made it effortless. So finding some balance between complexity of controls and designing a shape that was user friendly was clearly the way forward. Since then, it seems that joysticks haven't really come back into fashion like they were in the mid 90's. They are usually more of a specialist input device, commonly used in flight simulator games, in arcades, and among the diehard joystick fans. Although there is technically nothing wrong with how they function, it must just be down to how user friendly they are, as to whether they would be adopted by the public. If there was a demand for them, I'm sure joysticks would come back into fashion because there are more applications now than ever before where they could be used, its just a question of do we need then? with games controllers becoming ever more complex and intelligent.
Instead, the games industry saw the rise of the game pad controllers. For the most part, they started out as small boxy things; a reflection on the amount of inputs needed to play the games at the time with little thought put into the aesthetics of design. Gradually as games became more complex, controllers got bigger and grew more buttons. To the point where some were some grew so big, they look ugly AND impractical to use.
The best example of this would probably be Sega's controllers, they may have got the job done, but they didn't half look ugly!
The nicest looking one was probably the sega Saturn 2nd generation
controller, but take a look at the Dreamcast! I remember playing one of
those, and one thing I remember above all else, was the shape of it. It was just super alien and looked more like you were holding a spaceship that a hand held controller. It had tones of functionality for its time, but most of that went overlooked I believe, overshadowed by Sony's simpler, more classic and easy to understand design for the Playstation controller.
In my opinion it has a much more sleek and attractive design. Even though its a technological downgrade from what the Dreamcast controller had to offer, what the PS1 controller did, it did well. The design was so good in fact, that Sony have pretty much left it untouched through the generations of new consoles and hardware. New features have been added and its changed a lot for sure, but if you ignore the innovations going on inside the controller, its overall shape remains the same; including with the new PS4 version recently announced. Though, I do admit by the looks of it this is the largest aesthetic modification that Sony has made yet.
It may be part of the reason Playstation was so popular over the slightly older Dreamcast and ultimately kicked Sega's machine out of the console war. Good design and simple interaction won out.
Since I've mention Sony's Playstation I think its fitting to also talk about its competitors Microsoft and Nintendo in the gaming market and what innovations they have brought to the field.
For the majority of the time I was a console gamer (since moved on to PC) Xbox was always my favourite. I remember getting my first Xbox console and for me it was the first gaming console i'd actually owned. The design was really cool at the time, but I always remember begging my mum to buy me the green translucent version instead of the default black, but that slight cosmetic difference came at a cost and she was having none of it.
Even now I look at it and still think its probably one of the coolest looking games consoles ever. I know the look wasn't for everyone, but it sure looked mean. It was clearly designed to be bold and as make a statement being the new kid on the block. I still have my Xbox though they weren't without faults and very accustomed to developing failures in the hardware, mainly the disk drives, as was the case with mine. Funny thing was, Microsoft seemed to have taken some design inspiration from Sega's Dreamcast when they designed the Xbox's controller. Bundled with the original package shipped in 2000, it was Code named "Duke", and it was a beast.
I remember thinking it was huge. Heaven help and small kids that wanted got a first gen Xbox for christmas! lol
Microsoft had had also released another version called "controller S" which was the standard controller in Japan. Perhaps the average person in japan had smaller hands so needed a smaller controller? Who knows. Anyway It wasn't long before Microsoft replaced "duke" and began shipping xbox in other territories with the "S" version.
With the unveil of the xbox 360 in 2005 there were no real major innovations to speak of as far as design goes for both controller and console. They added a home button and turned the xbox on its side, and added two new front bumpers to the controller. However, even though the changes to the controller were subtle, they did make a big difference. IMO the Xbox 360 has one of the best feeling controllers out there. Its design is near perfection in many ways, with a few big shortcomings. like the D pad which I found was still quite slugging and untrustworthy in fighting games. I forgot to mention the option for wireless gaming via batteries or rechargeable battery pack. That was a pretty big innovation and one that has now become standard with games consoles. It let you as a gamer interact with your environment in a totally different way when your finally free of those clumsy cables, liable to be tripped over and ripped out. Skip 5 years down the line and Xbox 360 is now on its way out as goes the lifetime of most consoles. However Microsoft reveals a new motion capture and control technology called Kinect.
This could be considered a big forward thinking innovation for the way gamers interact with their games. But the idea never really caught me and I found myself with zero interest to invest in this new technology. Partly because the games that came with it were gimmicky and light to say the least, but also because It was quite pricey, not a accessory I wanted to fork out the price of a new Xbox for.
Naturally Nintendo comes next, but before then, this image kinda sums the design strategy for all three up nicely.
That's right Nintendo are risk takers and sometimes its payed off, others not so much, like recently with the Wii U launch. However Nintendo holds pride of place in my mind for best controller ever. Gamecube launched in 2001 and brought to the field a new compact, attractive design for consoles. It may have been technologically lagging behind the more powerful Xbox and PS2, but that little cube still packed a punch and had some crazy fun titles that came with it. Like Super Smash Bro's Melee and Soul Caliber 2. But best of all was its controller; It just seemed to get it right, that's all I can say.
Of course I have to mention the Nintendo's Wii. The Wii was released in 2006 and really pioneered motion control with its duel stick controls. It opened the field for games consoles to not only be about gaming, but also be about fitness, involving elderly, and creating a more "family friendly" console that the whole household could theoretically enjoy and use. It changed how people perceived interaction with games consoles and since then its been a massive hit world wide. Sony adopted motion control with Playstation Move in 2009, but it hit it off nearly as successfully as the Wii had. It was strange to see the older generations buying into games consoles again and it was clearly a smart design move by Nintendo.
Aside from just talking about what the big names out the in the industry have designed themselves, why not look at some community concepts for future games consoles before there actual design was revealed. Some of the are quite well done, and just shows that maybe big companies like, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are just playing it safe, making boring looking machines.
Most of those were ridiculous and not focusing on how the consumer would actually interact with the devices, but some of them were kinda cool. like the round Xbox that is last ps4 concept. Just goes to show that the community can serve as a vast reservoir for ideas and they are very creative. Just look at Microsoft's new next gen console "Xbox One" release. What a dumb name! I cant get over how underwhelming that press reveal was. And its gone down a storm with the gaming community, but not in a good way. This is for many reasons, not only limited to its "pay to share" policy with used games, but because of Microsoft's dishearteningly minimal focus on the actual gaming side of the console. Seriously, I couldn't care less about TV, and essentially that's all the new Xbox one is aimed at IMO.
This angry gamer rant sums it up pretty good I think. (If you have sensitive ears I suggests you don't listen)
