God damnit - Got back from Gamecity a few days ago now - might post up me thoughts but tbh too many people have done it and most have done it better than i could - plus no one is reading this...
ANYWAY my coat got nicked, the one i was modelling and my hair is longer and black so i've decided to start me model from scratch and learn from my mistakes
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Education
Good grief Education, as someone who seems to have struggled with it most of my life im not sure im qualified to provide any real insight into it, but whatever.
Theres a school of thought that suggests modern teaching methods and the whole education system in general is crushing any creativity out of children from day one and moulding them to follow the 3 constants of maths, science and history, not sure about history in that one but you get the gist of it.
This stems back to Britains modern industrial roots where having an adept knowledge of maths or science provided a quick 'grab bag' of skills to surive in this exciting new world of cotton mills and pig iron fast foward to today where most of the UK's skill base is primarly service based and it still more or less applies today. But there is certainly a feeling of rank and prestige applied to certain subjects whereupon others are looked down upon as useless or even uneccesary for an education.
I'l' be honest and say that EVERY subject i took throughout primary school all the way up to Sixth form has done diddly squat in helping me with the course, all the skills and knowledge i apply on a day-to-day basis getting whatever relevant work done was learnt at home on my own not at school which im realsing more and more was a complete waste of time.
Even subjects I would have thought useful even neccesary such as art where rendered useless by the muted style in which they were taught 'Just express yourself children' a phrase i heard all to often is great for someone who just wants to play around with paint but not someone who wants to learn the fundemental basics of art this of course wasn't helped by a frankly shit teacher just counting the days to her retirement .
This concept terrfies me, if something you spend nearly decades of your life attending to apparently 'prepare you for the real world' dosen't even apply to your particular life, just some gormless business student, then whats the point?
Theres a school of thought that suggests modern teaching methods and the whole education system in general is crushing any creativity out of children from day one and moulding them to follow the 3 constants of maths, science and history, not sure about history in that one but you get the gist of it.
This stems back to Britains modern industrial roots where having an adept knowledge of maths or science provided a quick 'grab bag' of skills to surive in this exciting new world of cotton mills and pig iron fast foward to today where most of the UK's skill base is primarly service based and it still more or less applies today. But there is certainly a feeling of rank and prestige applied to certain subjects whereupon others are looked down upon as useless or even uneccesary for an education.
I'l' be honest and say that EVERY subject i took throughout primary school all the way up to Sixth form has done diddly squat in helping me with the course, all the skills and knowledge i apply on a day-to-day basis getting whatever relevant work done was learnt at home on my own not at school which im realsing more and more was a complete waste of time.
Even subjects I would have thought useful even neccesary such as art where rendered useless by the muted style in which they were taught 'Just express yourself children' a phrase i heard all to often is great for someone who just wants to play around with paint but not someone who wants to learn the fundemental basics of art this of course wasn't helped by a frankly shit teacher just counting the days to her retirement .
This concept terrfies me, if something you spend nearly decades of your life attending to apparently 'prepare you for the real world' dosen't even apply to your particular life, just some gormless business student, then whats the point?
Friday, October 19, 2007
Carters hawt bod (!)
Okies! As far as i can tell i've finished the body and just have to make some decent looking hair, it took me a while squashing and scaling the head down to look correct on my body while at the same time conforming to the reference images i used i have about 80 tris for the hair now thats probaly not enough i dunno i might get away with it
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Head Progress
Making progress on the head this is my third attempt i think now and it finally looks vaguely like me! Those rugged good looks...
The head is 584 tris left out of my budget of 735 for the head so i have 151 tris left to finish off the neck and do some decent hair - its gonna be pretty tight i think...
Okies been idly modelling myself, I've not been investing nearly enough time into this as i have with the art side of things but i feel alot more confident with modelling than i do drawing - anywho figured i'd post up some WIP screenies to show i am actually doing something,
The entire thing so far is 1773 tris that leaves me with exactly 727 tris for the head and and hair - i dunno is that too much too little? Be good if someone could post up there thoughts
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
So i've recently completed HL2 EP2 tis great and all, real whizz bang etc But why is it all of the Half-Life games seem to have me moving from one place to another powering stuff up or waiting for lifts? I know theres smatterings of pretty decent plot and some pretty enjoyable set pieces but jeez another lift?!
You could argue this is valves way of keeping the games narrative conventions in check 'the lift won't work until you find the powersource, now bugger off over there and find it' but im getting pretty tired of it, it harks beack to the original Doom's coloured keycard hunt and if this is a reflection of FPS games in general its pretty worrying from a gameplay POV, I can see massive flaws in this argument already but its late and i wanted to get this damn lift hate off my chest
You could argue this is valves way of keeping the games narrative conventions in check 'the lift won't work until you find the powersource, now bugger off over there and find it' but im getting pretty tired of it, it harks beack to the original Doom's coloured keycard hunt and if this is a reflection of FPS games in general its pretty worrying from a gameplay POV, I can see massive flaws in this argument already but its late and i wanted to get this damn lift hate off my chest
Friday, June 01, 2007
Jon Jones
I've just stumbled across this site about working as a freelancer in the games industry, improve your portfolio - loads of useful info really
http://www.thejonjones.com
http://www.thejonjones.com
Friday, May 18, 2007
Week 24 - at last...
Jesus gawd i suddenly realised today i haven't updated me blog in aaages and with me paying so much attention to the art and 3d side and with a dead laptop - found out today EVERYTHING has died ram, motherboard etc i've finally had an oppurtunity to update the old gal.
Okies end of the first year, im still here and i hope im saying this again the next year too. I've certainly learnt alot about drawing something which im sure i'd have to apply for a specialised fine art degree to learn and moy modellings improved leaps and bounds.
I think im naturally better at modelling than i am the 2d requirement but im planning on doing lots of practice over the summer to improve myself and hopefully tie all the techniques i've learnt together. Im hoping to concept a charaecter(sp) then model him/her/it in 3d.
Im looking foward to the next year specifically working in teams producing content - hopefully it should give us an idea of how working in a development studio is and the challenges it presents.
Okay yeah i've realised i've not got any ideas to improve upon the course alot of things have already been said and im not a person to say 'do this do that' im a sheep not a uh do'er but from what i've heard the course certainly is going in the right direction
Cya next year!
Okies end of the first year, im still here and i hope im saying this again the next year too. I've certainly learnt alot about drawing something which im sure i'd have to apply for a specialised fine art degree to learn and moy modellings improved leaps and bounds.
I think im naturally better at modelling than i am the 2d requirement but im planning on doing lots of practice over the summer to improve myself and hopefully tie all the techniques i've learnt together. Im hoping to concept a charaecter(sp) then model him/her/it in 3d.
Im looking foward to the next year specifically working in teams producing content - hopefully it should give us an idea of how working in a development studio is and the challenges it presents.
Okay yeah i've realised i've not got any ideas to improve upon the course alot of things have already been said and im not a person to say 'do this do that' im a sheep not a uh do'er but from what i've heard the course certainly is going in the right direction
Cya next year!
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Next gen asset creation
Okies i've choosen Cross Application Asset Creation for LAIR (Catchy) flicking through the number of articles this is the one that stood out for me most of the gameplay articles seemed too 'what if' for my liking rather than concentrating on the near future direction is taking, plus this lecturer raised questions i had been wondering about myself, how has the timespan increased for the completionof assets for a next gen game to a current gen one? Are more specialised people needed with a greater knowledge of packages? Are games shrinking in scope as it becomes harder and slower to produce all the assets required?
Gameplay quibbles aside Lair does look pretty good and seems to be throwing the entierity of the latest and greatest graphical effects at the screen to give it that next gen sheen, i was recently privy to a Art R&D talk from Volitiale games on how there approaching asset creation for the next gen - the major thing between the current and next generation certainly in consoles at least dosen't neccasirly seem to be polycount it seems to be more the number of maps being displayed at once, luminance maps, normal maps, specular maps as well as several other maps were shown designed for a specific purpose all being displayed at once interacting with each other and giving everything that lovely glossy sheen.
So if you consider that current gen games use typically a diffuse or colour map and perhaps a luminance map at once thats an increase of around 5 maps that have to be created to push an asset as far as it can currently be taken plus polycounts have to be taken into consideration as well as creating a high poly version for proper normal map extraction and you've got a huge increase in time, i don't feel like dragging up the quote but Epic said it used to take them around a week to create a new charecter for UT2004 from concept to running around in the engine in about a week now for a Gears of War charecter it took them around 6 weeks to do a single charecter. Thats a huge increase in time invested and it makes you wonder if the tools currently available for creating this content is as streamlined and compatible as possible. Indeed there dosen't exist a model viewer free or not that can display all the maps at once for a next generation model - if the tools don't even for you to preview your models before they have to be tagged and imported into an engine your left with feeling a tang of sympathy for the people currently trying to wrestle all of these new techniques and approaches into a workable solution
Gameplay quibbles aside Lair does look pretty good and seems to be throwing the entierity of the latest and greatest graphical effects at the screen to give it that next gen sheen, i was recently privy to a Art R&D talk from Volitiale games on how there approaching asset creation for the next gen - the major thing between the current and next generation certainly in consoles at least dosen't neccasirly seem to be polycount it seems to be more the number of maps being displayed at once, luminance maps, normal maps, specular maps as well as several other maps were shown designed for a specific purpose all being displayed at once interacting with each other and giving everything that lovely glossy sheen.
So if you consider that current gen games use typically a diffuse or colour map and perhaps a luminance map at once thats an increase of around 5 maps that have to be created to push an asset as far as it can currently be taken plus polycounts have to be taken into consideration as well as creating a high poly version for proper normal map extraction and you've got a huge increase in time, i don't feel like dragging up the quote but Epic said it used to take them around a week to create a new charecter for UT2004 from concept to running around in the engine in about a week now for a Gears of War charecter it took them around 6 weeks to do a single charecter. Thats a huge increase in time invested and it makes you wonder if the tools currently available for creating this content is as streamlined and compatible as possible. Indeed there dosen't exist a model viewer free or not that can display all the maps at once for a next generation model - if the tools don't even for you to preview your models before they have to be tagged and imported into an engine your left with feeling a tang of sympathy for the people currently trying to wrestle all of these new techniques and approaches into a workable solution
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Week 19
Some game companies want highly trained graduate artists and programmers. Some claim they really prefer creative individuals with a good Liberal Arts background. They can't both be right can they?
Uh well yeah they can - games by there very nature seem to tie together both the technical aspects of creating an engine, tool set etc as well as the artistic side of story lines, conceptual art, modelling etc because games are getting more and more complex with ever increasing specialist jobs i can see these two divides one of institulationised - arghhh spelling, I'm an artist not an writer etc artistic skills and the other a more free form creative individual.
Can you teach creativity? No of course you can't and it should be more of a requirement to gain further education rather than a incentive to produce apparently 'creative' pieces of work which ultimately in most people's eyes look like pretentious drivel poop. Higher education courses and even internal development studio courses should be teaching how to learn a new tool or equipment, much the same way your taught how to use a new medium such as watercolour learning and mastering something like a modelling app inevitably leads to bouts of creative expression and i don't know flair or something i guess, something which ultimately cannot be taught.
Essentially you cannot tell an artist exactly what to draw/model whatever and seriously expect it to come back exactly as you states he's gonna slip in his own creative processes whether you like it or not.
Uh well yeah they can - games by there very nature seem to tie together both the technical aspects of creating an engine, tool set etc as well as the artistic side of story lines, conceptual art, modelling etc because games are getting more and more complex with ever increasing specialist jobs i can see these two divides one of institulationised - arghhh spelling, I'm an artist not an writer etc artistic skills and the other a more free form creative individual.
Can you teach creativity? No of course you can't and it should be more of a requirement to gain further education rather than a incentive to produce apparently 'creative' pieces of work which ultimately in most people's eyes look like pretentious drivel poop. Higher education courses and even internal development studio courses should be teaching how to learn a new tool or equipment, much the same way your taught how to use a new medium such as watercolour learning and mastering something like a modelling app inevitably leads to bouts of creative expression and i don't know flair or something i guess, something which ultimately cannot be taught.
Essentially you cannot tell an artist exactly what to draw/model whatever and seriously expect it to come back exactly as you states he's gonna slip in his own creative processes whether you like it or not.
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