Personal Blog - Jumping Ship, Tumblr Time

Yes, you heard me right. Or would that be "Yes, you read me right"? I digress.

Seeing as it was all but confirmed in class that we would be having to skip over into the world of Tumblr for the upcoming year, I've finally fought my way out of activity apathy in order to cobble together a background and logo to slap onto a new blog after seeking out a premade template that would at least allow SOME flexibility in appearances.



So yes. I won't be posting on here any more. But of course, I'll keep this blog alive for the purpose of maintaining a link to my first year of studying.


For the new blog, follow the link below~

http://frank-connell-pdgd.tumblr.com/

Tumblr

I thought one post would be enough. But I might as well go ahead and make a second one.

I believe that college obliges me to maintain this blog on Blogger, but I have decided that I want to make a clone on Tumblr to go with what I hope to be my general pieces and musings on the world of gaming and drawing.

I'll post a link to that when I've managed to get it up and running. I do rather want to tart up this page as well, but it isn't the easiest thing to do in all honesty. At least, for someone that doesn't know all that much about html. I really should grab a book and learn me up on this sort of thing... design holds an interest in my life, and I'd love to be able to like... tailor a page more to my taste.

Rolling into Year 2

It hasn't officially begun /just/ yet. Tuesday marked Induction Day where we got reintroduced to the building and a rough outline of how this next year is going to pan out. And overall? I'm incredibly excited. To the point where I rather wish that next Tuesday would hurry up.

Found out a little more about how we're going to be working on our game ideas as well. While I initially felt a little bummed out that we have themes to adhere to, I've since given it some actual thought and realised more or less that in the actual games industry... the odds are that such limits would be imposed anyway. Furthermore, it can actually prove more of a challenge to design something within constraints then running wild with the old imagination. Constraints do give rise to surprising bursts of creativity if one takes the right attitude towards it.

As such, I think I've already worked out a rough idea of what I can be doing. But alas... January is a long way away! I'm hoping to at least formulate a plan in that time, however - a plan of what to make that doesn't push too hard but instead steadily forms the foundations of design and programming and art that can be used to later make more complicated things.

We've also been given the flexibility of working either in teams or alone. I'm going to sit on the fence for a little bit longer in terms of what I want to do here - I'm not averse to working in a team, but I can never help but wonder if I might just learn more by working on my own. Equally, I'm thinking I probably will want to swap between tech demos - maybe make the first on my own, work in a team for the second et cetera. An open mind is important.

From now til December, we're going to be learning as we have for the past year, albeit with more subjects compressed into a month rather than 4/3 months for each. I'm personally looking forward to learning a bit more from all the disciplines, though I can sympathise with those that have subjects they want to do more than the ones they don't. The next term could still be a game changer.

Good times, overall. Looking forward to it!

Game Art - Diorama, Part 4

Getting closer to the end of writing up this assignment. Strange, isn't it?

For added convenience, I'm including links to the previous posts. Just so there is less scrolling to mess around with. I may edit the previous posts to also contain links, but probably not. I am notoriously lazy, after all.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Additional Objects

As possibly touched upon in previous posts, I'd more or less prioritised the basic diorama itself over having too much to work with at once in the form of the room and objects to populate it as well. After finishing the cabin, I found that I still more or less had 5 days in which to make some small objects to place upon the table.

I returned to my sketches to see which items I could realistically build within the time constraints... it would have been a no no to try and make something that was complicated (With one exception). I settled upon -:

• A radio
• A book
• A bottle of whisky
• Playing cards
• Planks

I wanted to make some posters as well... but I discarded this idea at first owing to not having time to draw them from scratch. More on this later.

Anyway, it turned out that it didn't take me too long to make the objects in question, mostly being composed. My radio was rather move complicated than the rest of the objects I created, and I initially had some trouble making a number of indentations in the model to represent the inset speakers. Using a compound object and trying to use the Boolean function resulted in my model getting covered in so many lines that I doubt it would have unwrapped. Instead, I used a pro-boolean function... while I have no idea why, it worked in creating the inset speakers without confusing the object with additional faces/edges. Naturally, there was also a fair amount of vertex welding of multiple objects to fuse everything together.

I made planks to cover the window somewhat, create that boarded up appearance I was gunning for earlier on in the project.

From left to right - Radio, Book, Bottle, Cards

Planks for the window

I created original textures for the radio, the book and the bottle (which I lovingly called Black Spaniels Bourbon). The playing cards used images scanned from some Fallout : New Vegas cards I have in my possession, something of a little nod towards the original inspiration for this piece. The planks used the texture I'd created for the cabin floor - Given the lack of time available before hand in, I didn't want to waste time making a similar texture from scratch.

... lazy, I know.

Early progress for the book.

Early planks. The colours didn't look right in 3DS Max, and so later they were darkened.

Book and Radio before bumpmapping. The radio was going to be blue instead of green... but I somehow felt that green was a more fitting shade.

Planks recoloured, and nails hastily painted in. At this point, almost everything was bump mapped.

All but the cards had been textured.

Cards textured, using the Fallout : New Vegas playing cards from the Collectors Edition

So yeah. Pretty much everything textured and completed. On the final day before hand in, I visited the Fallout Vault wiki to find some posters from the games Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I would have vastly preferred to have made my own posters, but time at this point (THE FINAL DAY) really didn't permit me the time. They were made using diffuse and opacity textures. Nothing special.

Below would be the diorama in the state I handed it in... in.

In the FINAL PART!...

... Some screenshots from the diorama in the Unity Engine.

Game Art - Diorama Part 3

It is now Friday, which is roughly 3 days since the first year of college concluded. And I do have to say that as much as I enjoyed doing the work... I didn't realise just how badly I actually needed a break until I had nothing to do on Wednesday. While I told myself I would kick back and relax... I have a duty yet to complete my write up of the Diorama assignment. So lets get to it, eh?

Textures

So, onto the texturing. I'll only go into the process of how I turned one of my UV(M?) Maps into a texture that could be applied onto my models, but I will likely show all the finished textures for the sake of pretend enlightenment.

I decided that the best place for me to start with the texturing would be the simplest model, which amounted to the ceiling and floor... what with them being perfectly flat and all. So needless to say, unwrapping was a very simple process. I used a box unwrap.

The unwrapped map. The top square being the floor, and the bottom square being the ceiling. Simple.

 The texture was itself going to be fairly simple, being composed of planks, and seeing as I intended on painting everything from scratch, I had to do a spot of internet searching to find some tutorials to help me get started.  For the sake of posterity, I'll also include the video that gave me the push in the right direction.



For a short video, it was very useful. I am sure that I might well have achieved a lesser result if I'd simply used a stock photo of a plank as the basis of my work, but with that said and done, I wouldn't have thought of adding in a highlight to the grains of wood, which I think really adds to the overall result. It was really one of those things where it didn't look like anything when I started... and by the time I was done, I could safely say that what I had looked like planks.

I had to recycle a couple of plank textures I'd made, simply because I made them a bit too wide prior to this version.

And then the bump mapping. I used a program called Crazy Bump to create the bump map for my texture. I don't really know what else I can say. So have some pictures instead.

And while this may be out of sequence, these bump maps all come together to form  -:

And without further ado... some further screenshots of the rest of the project as I added further textures to each part of the diorama.

I used some custom brushes for the rest of the diorama, taking inspiration from Team Fortress 2 in not making the textures too detailed. Not sure how well I succeeded in suggesting detail rather than explicitly adding detail... but I tried. I /tried/. Afterall, if I wanted to work towards a more cartoon style, to have excessive detail in my textures would be counter productive.

 

In the next part!...

The final steps composed of adding extra bits and pieces to the diorama, and maybe even the final piece as placed in the Unity Engine.

Game Art - Diorama Part 2

Oh boy, the excitement. A week on, a new post. Where have I been? I've been working hard on finishing my diorama. As I write, I'm still not quite finished, although all that really remains is to bump map the textures I have done. Given that I also have a bit more time available before the hand in day, I've decided to add some additional objects to the diorama.

Additional objects? Why yes, I worked mostly on getting the absolute basics completed first, which is the cabin itself and the dressing table serving as the centrepiece. The additional objects are going to get their own write up after I have written part 3.

Building the Room

Anyway, so as of the last post, I'd mostly decided on what I was wanting to make, which was a fallout-esque post bomb room that had been usurped by a wandering survivor. Pretty much the first thing that changed as I started building up the rough objects that would make up the room as that... I felt flat walls were going to be a bit bland... even with bump mapping. I also wanted to conquer curved objects which meant that a log cabin seemed like a sensible way to go.

The basic layout of the room as laid out in the sketches.

I might as well throw up the rest of my render shots as they are, as they will tell more about what happened as I went along then trying to explain.

Same as the previous shot, only a different angle. So terribly obvious.

For the record, the table was composed of both box and cylinder objects, as well as some areas drawn with the line tool and converted into editable polys. The table also featured some chamfering on the edges in an attempt to make it look more curved.

At this point, I'd been working on the mirror for my dressing table, and had decided that I would rather have a larger window than a window and a door. 

Used the Boolean function in compound objects to cut a square shape out of one wall for the window. Table also rotated... because I could.

Additional note - The table was completed using symmetry on the half I had already made. I'll go into the details in the third part, but this did not really work out very well at all.

A diversion as I tested out a bump mapped texture. This was where I decided I definitely wanted to stick with painted textures rather than using photos.

The diorama still coming together. I decided to add a roof for some reason. I'm honestly not sure why.

I'm sad to say that I really don't have a lot to say here. I'll just say that the scene had deviated from the sketched plan for assorted reasons, from wanting use the space a bit better all the way though to wanting to make the diorama a little more closed up (Seeing as I envisioned the lighting in here coming through the window alone, I needed a ceiling.)

 

I also learnt how to use the Boolean and Bridge functions during this part of the work process. And whilst there are no screenshots to show (seeing as one would literally see nothing)... everything behind what can be seen in the screenshots has been removed, seeing as it would be time consuming to unwrap and texture areas that won't be visible in screenshots or in the Unity Engine.

 

In the next part!...

 

I'll be going into the texturing.

Game Art - Diorama Part 1

Yes, I really should have started uploading my progress a whole lot sooner than I actually have.. so much for the promise of keeping up to date this time!

But still, I'm going to make it my mission over the weekend to upload as many steps in my work as physically possible. With that out of the way, let us begin.

Planning

Our assignment was to create a 10 foot by 10 foot diorama of our own choosing, using our skills picked up from the pirates chest assignment to build a small scene, making sure that objects and scenery were to human proportions. A little something that seems incredibly obvious and simple, but as many of us discovered... the limitations of the diorama proved challenging as less could be fit into the space then one could have imagined.

Case in point, I was originally planning to design a Edo period shrine using hand painted textures, with a little river and a bridge, as inspired by the influences Spirited Away had on my pirate's chest. However, although I'd presumed that I would have enough space... it turned out that I really did not. I downright rejected an alternative idea of a diorama based on where one of my notebook characters Bill Dup lives (seen briefly in the image below as a half arsed windmill and fence)



Early ideas for a spirit shrine or the home of Bill Dup.

I continued along the route of the shrine until I simply felt that I wouldn't be able to do my idea any justice, given how much would have to be removed in order to make it fit. It was around this time that I suddenly decided to work on a diorama based on Fallout : New Vegas. A game series that has always taken my interest and it seemed so very obvious to me that I could create something visually interesting.


However, it was still too large for the dimensions!

The scene remained larger, but the lower right sketch was about the time I settled on a scene that would fit into the dimensions and still prove visually interesting.

So by this point, I'd started testing object sizes within 3DS Max, and began to feel that a lot of my objects were far too simple and geometric. As I will show in the next part of this blog, I decided to move from wooden walls to log walls, and turned a basic table into something more complicated... a dressing table.

Also at this point, I was still debating whether to take a painterly approach to my work or use photographed textures. I eventually leaned towards painting my own from scratch simply due to wanting to experiment with art style... as well as try and learn to do something I've not done before. So basically, I was working towards a Fallout style scavenger hut with a more Team Fortress 2 inspired art style.

In the next part!...

I go over the process of making some things. Whee.

Game Art - Pirate's (tea) Chest

This is more of a summary post than an actual detailed log of my work, in part because I simply forgot to regularly update my progress this time around. Hopefully I'll jump back into maintaining this blog correctly now.

So to briefly run over the assignment, we were told to make a pirate's chest in 3DS Max, to create it and then texture it. This felt rather a lot more like programming in that I was working in an area that has never really been a part of my hobby in drawing, and so I had quite a lot of work to do. Adding to this that I generally like to challenge myself that little bit further than just doing the bare requirement, I had a lot of work to do. And I'm not sure how I feel about the finished product. But more on that later.

Early ideas for the work chiefly involved drawing designs on paper (I'll leave a space here for when I scan the pages in question - I'm on a new PC as I type this, and thus have no art programs or scanner installed), and I soon found myself wandering away from the idea of a straight out pirate chest. I originally planned to make something that has spawned from a character idea, with this particular character carrying a portable tea chest.

I rode with this idea until I actually started working in 3DS Max. While I felt like I probably could have gotten away with the shapes even after unwrapping, I ultimately decided that it didn't have any particular theme running in it, and after I started researching into oriental tea chests... I simply decided to rein my idea back into a tea chest. I stand by the technicality that tea was once valuable and thus an item pirates would possess. This still allowed me to have the challenge of creating an object with multiple holes to accommodate a door and drawers.

The completed chest before texturing. Divided into several objects to allow the unwrapping to be less painful

Unwrapping took a horrifically long time for me. In fact, it took up the time I would have preferred to have spent texturing. My issues included the map messing up when unpeeled, and thus having to work to move the lines to their correct positions as precisely as I could. Mercifully, the other objects proved a lot easier to unwrap. Another problem I had which was really more of a niggle than a difficulty... was possessing Photoshop and 3DS Max on separate computers, meaning I couldn't see my changes in real time.

My first attempt at fixing the UV Map. Not much of a success.

Second attempt at fixing the UV map. Not perfect, but it worked well enough for texturing.

Above two images are early texture texts for the main body as well as the golden circles on either side.

I further textured the rest of the chest, and prepared to hand in. However, the deadline was extended just long enough for me to further "refine" the textures as well as add an additional object in the form of handles for the drawers and door. With even less time to create and texture such an object along with refining the edges on my textures, I created something relatively simple.

Untextured handle and drawer before additional texturing

Handle textured and drawer edges refined.

At which point, I realised my edge lines were far too thick. In addition, I also noticed one corner of the chest top had a gap in it which meant one could see inside the object. However, I didn't know how capping the area in question would effect the rest of the UV map and so didn't chance changing it. As for the edge lines... well, it was hand in day. I didn't have any further time to spend on the work.

The final piece handed in for assessment.

As is always the case, one always feels like I could have done better, but then I remind myself that this is really the first time I've worked in 3D and textured an object. Hopefully I'll look back in a years time and chortle at how bad I was at modelling and texturing. For now, I'm content that I did as much as I could do with what I knew.

Game Art - Character Development WIPS 3

I call this WIPS 3, but it isn't a work in progress at all. This is more the point where I felt that I was starting to lose track of what I was meant to be doing, and that I should stop before I find myself in a position where I'm getting lost in the details.

This is also the point where I generally feel unhappy with the results. On the other hand, being someone that has not draw more 'realistic' humans  given a preference for cartooning... I feel like I've done what I'm able to do with the experience I have at present. I'm not going to excessively beat myself up for not pulling off the job perfectly.

Like I've said in earlier entries, I only feel like I want to try harder to get into the habit of drawing and  practicing on a regular basis. It is hard sometimes to remember that I'm not just working from a "hobby in my spare time" standpoint anymore.

Game Art - Character Development WIPS 2

A minor update. With a deadline extension and my body now at a point where I'm fully operational again, I find that I still do not have a massive amount of time available to me to finish the work as I see it in my head. But I've told myself many times that I need to be realistic with how much I can actually do.

I've set myself a deadline for Tuesday to give me time to make alternate plans if my printer decides it doesn't want to function correctly. As a result, I am focusing more on lightly refining the work I did before my spine decided that I needed more pain and less mobility in my life.

I'm going to show off an earlier version of what I'm working on at this moment in time. I've used a transparancy locked layer to paint over my black and white drawings with colour, originally to deduce how they would come over in a final image... and is instead now serving as a base to add further details and refinement of character features. Further highlights and deeper shadows.

edit - A bit more

This assignment has really made me feel like I could do with upping my drawing frequency, and without feeling boastful I'm starting to believe that I just need to practice and learn a little more.

Game Art - Character Development WIPS

I'm writing this while dosed up to the eyeballs with assorted painkillers... I'm not even sure that they are really working, but I'm positive I'd be feeling a lot worse if I weren't taking them. Back spasms... not a fun thing to be afflicted with, and they seem to keep cropping up. I should really take my body's hint and start exercising.

Up until the aforementioned back problems, work on the current assignment was going slowly but steadily. It has been tough fighting against my fear of Adobe Photoshop, and equally tough trying to establish a working method to make a final image work out.

So this would be my initial character sheet layout. Organized into rules of 3, I decided a large image of the character in his suit would be accompanied by some further images of the character in profile and portrait shots without the larger suit, and some images demonstrating the suit in action and how it appears from the inside. Thumbnail below -:

I hit upon the snag of the suit not measuring up when I attempted to iterate on the thumbnail sketches, and this resulted in a little impromtu reworking to try and gain a better resemblance to the diving suit inspirations... at least in terms of how a human body would fit into something so large and bulky. I also started designing the character himself. I did bad by adding colour, but I was struggling to work out how things went together otherwise.

Around this time, my back started playing up, and has made the task of doing my work a lot more problematic. I'm at the point now where I've done some shadow work ready to be iterated upon and finalised as soon as the pain subsides. I found myself working with the shadows by creating a dark silhouette and steadily applying lighter shades, it worked a lot better for me than adding darker colours onto a white background.

That is about all I have right now. Fingers are crossed I'll be able to feel well enough to get this done by Thursday.

Game Art - Character Development Images Part 2

A minor update to note down changes and ideas that have developed since the last post.

I have more or less decided to focus entirely on the space themed character, mostly because I want to spread my wings just enough to try and work on an artstyle I want to develop rather than playing more safely with a cartoon artstyle I already know I can pull off (Without being boastful!). Besides that, I have found myself rather interested in the ideas of making a heavyset (FATASS) character into an interesting design.

The bulky spacesuit design has also continued to mutate as I found difficulty in making a large domed torso work with arms and legs that could still function normally. I could very well have worked out a method of making this work if I felt inclined... however, my diving suit moodboard I lovingly knitted together with all the tenderness of a man beating a squirrel with a rock... took me down a different route of designing the suit. So this first image comes before I firmed up on the decision that I didn't want to work with a dome shape, and also features a rudimentary doodle of the man IN the suit.

Small sketches from a pocket notebook I carry around for quick drawing during journies

As I started trying to refine the design above into a larger image to add detail and accessories, I grew increasingly irked at how I couldn't feel that the suit was practical... and furthermore, the idea for the suit was increasingly becoming more of a powersuit that would feature additional components for long haul space walks and repairs in a zero gravity environment. I started referenced the diving suit moodboard and started to change the shape of the suit to allow for a greater range of arm movement.

Although these drawings are far from complete, I started to make the domed compartment of the suit more rectangular, and used older diving suits as an inspiration for how to structure the rest of it. I soon decided to make the main arms a lot larger and longer than natural arms for tethering to surfaces or lifting larger objects, and add smaller arms for delicate work. I also started working more towards the idea of the suit being operated like a machine rather than an outfit, both for the character to work for long durations of time in a cockpit like environment, and to have a concrete idea of how any character could get into and out of the suit.

Again from my pocket sketchbook, a design I am more satisified with as well as demonstrating how the suit opens up.

  I will be uploading digital drawings in the next day or two, while right now I'm starting to work out the composition of the final piece due to be handed in on the 30th May. This is proving surprisingly difficult, although I am going to be speaking to the tutor some more on Thursday to discuss what I can do. I'm starting to look at images of spacewalks, which I feel would best reflect the function of the suit. I'm also going to be working on some additional, rougher images of the suit from different perspectives as well as the opened up suit as shown above... afterall, the assignment is about making ourselves into a character and I feel the suit with a visor would obscure that.

I'll have to see what else I can do (maybe add a screen 'head' on top of the suit that is connected to a videolink in the cockpit?) to get this done.

EDIT - Forgot to mention that I'm also considering keeping the suit fairly mechanical whilst being covered in fabric - akin to that on regular space suits as well as what seems to cover the International Space Station. I find it an intriguing idea to follow.