Final line - end of year presentation

So it's nearly the end of the year... it went incredibly fast!

While doing the final presentation of the Learning Journey it made me start thinking a lot about what I've done so far and what I need to improve over the summer.
For the presentation I decided to use Prezi; an online presentation maker that allows to float around empty spaces and use zooming in and out as the main 'moving' tool. I think it breaks out the Power Point presentation styles and at the same time is incredibly quick unlike editing a video with moving text/images in after effects. I decided to gave it a go after downloading the app on my ipad.

Some of the reflections involve me doing a decent work at putting myself out there: website, social media appearance and even business cards, but the problem I noticed after applying to a few companies is that I have a really weak portfolio.
Definitely it's something I need to work over the summer and also I'll work into my dissertation topic: 3D sculpting.
Looking forward to start new projects and potentially get involved in the Zbrush community. 

(At the point where I posted this, the presentation wasn't complete, but I assume it'll update automatically when I do finish it)  

FlipNote Studio 3D - good animation practice

I remember hearing about FlipNote studio for the Nintendo DSXL ages ago but never took interest on it. Recently I heard that they're updating it to FlipNote Studio 3D adding a lot of features to the software from the obvious 3D feature, to layered workflow and even a social network to share and comment of people's animation all over the world.
Since I got a 3DS XL not long ago I'm pretty happy to give it a go, and maybe have a potential tool to quickly sketch animations or animatic since it has the possibility of exporting to other editing softwares.



This is an example of the capabilities of the previous FlipNote studio; it was made for an online competition celebrating the 25th anniversary of  Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda.

A little help from a stranger...

This time I want to talk a bit about something that has been happening recently, that has happen in the past and that probably happens to many people involved in the creative industry: Art-fear. 

It starts as a simple 'I'm not inspired at the moment' and it can go on for a long time while every single attempt of work seems meaningless, horrible and with incredible low standards. Comparing yourself with others' work and wasting time in the most incredible way (internet) is just a common practice while being stuck in this kind of phases. 

I was just recently going though all this and more and then, while actually comparing and admiring his work I came across his blog:

This is the profile picture of Nicholas Kole, an american illustrator and recently employee of EA who's work I don't even want to go to describe as it's like my holy grail of inspiration, but something that really got me was his way of speaking. I was incredibly surprise when I read this particular blog post in which he goes on about his art block, but more interesting, the way he deals with it.
The idea of him being talented and successful but at the same time going through the same sort of situation as I was made me realise that how much of a waste of time it can become.
In my case, I feel like I wasted time while deciding my career, so at my 24 years I have the feeling of catching up with the time I didn't practice and manage somehow to reach the level of talent as some younger people who realised their path earlier than me.
There's no time to get stuck, there's no time to worry about your work. You need to be drawing, you need to keep experimenting. This blog is my bible for when I start getting dark clouds above me and I wanted to share not only his amazing work but also his talent to cheer me up even when we've never met. I sent him a message on twitter trying to express my gratitude  and it could have been the 140 word limit or my lack of expressing in a writing way, but I'm sure he doesn't know how helpful he was to me.
Any way, the least I can do is to share his profile and hope you find his blog or work as inspiring as I do:

Portfolio    -    Twitter      -     Tumblr

SAI

It's been nearly two years since I started using an extra software as a tool for many of my illustrations. So far I can say that I got used to many of it's features that now I struggle when I don't have them in Photoshop; I'm talking about the originally Japanese software Easy Paint Tool SAI or better know as just SAI (ペイントツールSAI).

This is a lightweight raster graphics editor and painting software built for only for Windows by Systemax software. It has been around the market since 2004, but only as a free beta test and it was until 2008 that it was released as an official version. I remember trying a Japanese version ages ago, but it was definitely confusing not being used to the language as I was with the commands in Photoshop   

In my opinion it's one of the simplest drawing softwares there is out there as it shows only the important tools need to make a digital painting or drawing and the customization of tools get as simple as a double click. It is not to say that it substitutes Photoshop over all; the post production process and tweaking needed at the end of any piece is definitely impossible to make in SAI so unfortunately you're forced to open Photoshop and add the final touches, of just to add any text. 

Photoshop is without doubt the most solid and complex software for photoediting without a doubt but this feature can backfire and make things more complicated if you don't know the software entirely. 

Naming the pros and cons of SAI from my point of view: 

Cons: 

• Can't make modifications of colour, light, sharpness and others as easy as Photoshop. 
• Limited space for customised brushes. 
• There are resources for the software but obviously not as many as in Photoshop. 
• The amount of formats that its compatible is not extensive, but at least the most used digital ones are there. 
• No text tool whatsoever.

Pros:

• Very light program; there's no need of a super computer to make it run smoothly even when you creat pieces that are rather large. 
• It's said that it's a very unstable software that crashes a lot, but I've actually never had it crash on me...
• Better selection tools than Photoshop.
• Really intuitive and simple tools. 
• Has a Lineart layer that works with vectors that are really easy to modify and change line thickness. 
• Has a stabilizer features perfect when you need for the making of straight hand drawn lines (I wish Photoshop had this feature).

Over all, I've found this as an incredible useful tool, and I tend to integrate it to my work flow more often than I realize. The ability of being able to save in a Photoshop format makes it so easy to jump back and forth between the two softwares. I anyone has the chance to give it a go I highly suggest you do, even just out of curiosity. 

Game developing - Chinese Browsing Game design

While doing my research for my previous blog that was more of a short review of the iOS app Clash of Clans I came across several times with the term 'whale' user. 

Now despite the fact that I dislike whales, I couldn't help to want to know more about this concept. It turns out that is a recurrent phenomenon that spins around social gaming where this users determined as 'whale' users are the ones that significantly spend a lot of money, and when I say a lot it means that for some free-to-play games only the top 10 users are the ones that represent a 50% profit for the company, just to put an example. 

Now I'm not very good at talking about strategies when it comes to marketing or any economic related topics, and neither am a person who would spend money on any social or free-to-play games, but while doing some research I came across a talk by Jared Psigoda done for the Game Developers Conference 2012. The session is called "$100,000 Whales - An introduction to Chinese Browser Game Design" and as explanatory as the title can be, this session that lasts for nearly an hour by the CEO of Reality Square Games is so interesting that anyone interested in game developing or design should really watch. 

Now we all now how much of a power nation China is, but when it comes to news for videogames I can only find either American or Japanese products. In this talk you can clearly see, with statistics,  the reason why China it's its own market and when he points out the difference in numbers, not only of users, but on servers and general user behaviour, I couldn't imagine there was such a big difference in the design of a video game. 

I can't come to details as the examples are something I can't come up to pronounce, but it certainly opened my eyes to a whole new conceptualization of a game mechanic, and different approaches that a game company can take. To be honest, I feel now that any game company that releases one game and it's happy about just publishing looks nothing in comparison to the shark companies in China. 

Certainly scary, but worth keeping a notion of this concepts as even as game designers we can contribute to make a game successfully. 

Clash of Clans - review

It was probably around 6 months ago that I started playing Clash on Clans on both my iphone and ipad. At first it was just because of influence of friends who had it that I downloaded it and also because the clay-like models of the barbarians of the cover looked really cool. 

Supercell is the game company responsible for this strategy game for iOS that is recently been on of the top grossing apps in over 122 countries. 

When I first started I found it quite addictive  but since it's a game in which you either wait for things to be build or you invest real money to get things done quicker, I opted for the hard mode way: patience. 

I slowly started to make my way around building my base with as much defence as possible at the same time as gathering resources and raiding other players. 

It was good fun comparing villages with other friends and joining forces in Clans with people all over the world. It took me a couple of months to start losing a bit of interest on it, and it was mainly because things where taking a couple of day to build and every time I logged in my village has been raided by  some high level player, leaving me completely destroyed (and with a 16 hour protection shield, meaning that no one can attack you but you can't attack). I kept saying that I was going to quit the game but I think I was already to immerse in the game to just leave it like that. Still up to date that I wait for even 5 day to get constructions completed but still checking it at least once a day. 

The game itself it's not bad, the problem is when you confront with top players while I consider myself just a casual one. While doing my research about this game I came across a very interesting topic about whale player who spend fortunes on this kind of free-to-play games by buying upgrades and shortcuts. The online magazine Wired wrote an interesting article about this topic and in relation to this game that is worth looking at if you thing you that spending £1.99 is nearly a sin.

The strategy that involve in the game is minimum when you actually think about it and the advertised multiplayer mode is nothing but attacking a computer while the other player is offline (you can't attack other villages while the player is online).

I must admit that I have been tempted to spend money on this and other apps just to make up for my time, but then again I can't help but having this feeling of cheating by doing so, and it also kind of misses the point from my perspective.
If you're looking for an incredibly addictive game, please try Clash of Clans but don't you dare to attack my village.

Let's get down to business...

...to defeat the Huns ♫

So in all the commotion about having two deadlines with a space of 24 hours between them, I couldn't stop thinking about the lack of response I've had from the companies I've applied for. I try to think that is part of my weak portfolio or probably just not the time to apply (recession?) .

Either way I couldn't resist to rant my frustrations out to Anabeth and she came up with an extra idea to help my situation: Game Republic's Student Showcase!

Winning the competition for the logo granted me an entrance to the even this 30th of May at College. This only means that I'll have a chance to directly talk to people from the industry and more than offer the to reply to me in person (I won't do that), but the idea of having a chance of shaking some hands and maybe make some contacts does sound like a more mature approach to my situation. 

Also I was suggested something that I have been meaning to do since the beginning of the year but that I have been postponing: Print some business cards. 

I only gave myself a couple of hours to sort this out as I didn't wanted to waste my valuable time for my submission  but because of printing times, I just couldn't leave it any longer. So here's the design: 

Back and front..nothing special, nothing new, but it'll do the job for my first set. Had to had green somewhere and also wanted to add a QR code as a link to my website. I'll probably put more effort on the design for future printings, but for now I just want them to be delivered on time. 

I can feel the professionalism building up...

Defining yourself = stronger portfolio

In my desperation of not losing what I've built so far in my life, on integrating with the professional environment and trying to keep up with the strong suggestions at uni I've been applying myself to build up and image, get a portfolio sorted and applied for job in the area. So far, nothing has come up...

It can be quite stressing feeling "deadlines" coming up and the pressure of achieving things that isn't   necessarily is in your power to change can only lead to desperation.

In this time is when I start judging and analysing my work and my image as an 2d/3d artist and only the same question pops up in my mind: What do I want to focus on? 

Looking over and over to my website/portfolio I can't help to not understand what is it that I'm looking for on the industry; no wonder why I can't find a job. The idea of me being confortable with working on photoshop is only because I've been using it fo quite a few years now, but it doesn't mean I'm any good anyway. My 3D portfolio is incredibly weak at the moment and it's only because most of my work so far is not something I'm proud of. Animation is not something I've had a chance to fully give it a go so that department is even further remote for me to even mention. 

After analysing my self I realise that all this insecurities about myself are the ones that at the moment are stoping myself from promoting my Facebook fanpage, my website and artistic blogs that I've open yet haven't touch. I'm doing my best at the moment to stay on float with things, as luckily I feel like I have the support of the people around me and that only makes me say that after finishing this deadlines I'll do my best to polish my work, find myself a place in the industry or at least manage to set my mind in a more specific direction. 

For this, I'm strongly planning on basing my dissertation on 3D sculpting  a topic that seems very appealing to me as it can work for illustration as well as use it for the most recent videogame industry. Hopefully I'll get my head around Zbrush over the summer and be able to have a decent level to deliver a good final mayor project. 

Rose Ellen artwork

My daily life involves a substantial dose of tumblr just to keep up on the top 'news' of the people I'm following which are mainly artists. While skipping through my likes I notices that I pretty much have liked every single recent update of Rose Ellen. Now because of my recent idea about working on 3D sculpting for my dissertation, I thought about making a post about her work. There wasn't much information about her on her tumblr page, so I sent her a private message. 

I was surprise to get a quick reply from her, as previously some people haven't done in the past -_-u 

We shared a few emails and it turns out she's a really nice 21-year-old girl that studies college in Detroit, US.

She told me that she's only been using Maya about a year and a half ago, and that's when guiltiness stroked as I think I've been using it for the same amount of time and I'm nowhere near her quality.

The 'Harpy' (work below) was her project for the Creature sculpting assignment that lasted only two weeks. Apparently most people chose to go for ugly monsters, but she wanted to do something to put on her demo reel. Over all, her head sculpts usually take around 10 hours, depending on how realistic she wants to go. 

http://rosecole.tumblr.com/

Not only she's an amazing person, but she's talented; what else could anyone ask? Also very glad to hear that she got an undergraduate program internship at Pixar starting this June! I wish her the best luck and please have a look at her gallery as I only put a small taste of her talent. 

User interface studies

One of the jobs I see more often being advertised is for a UI (User Interface) designer. So far I thought that the idea of creating a UI was more related to a graphic designer and that it didn't have much impact on the game overall.

Astronautsally's character has her health and mana bar in her stocking.

After trying to get my head around some basics I came across several blogs and writings explaining how it has been implemented, how delicate it is and versatile this can become. Understanding this, I understood the massive importance this has in creating a game as it is the direct interaction between the game narrative and the user itself.
Gamasutra has two really good articles about it explaining the types and funtions of the UI interface:
Game UI Discoveries: What players want and The User Interface Continuum: A study of player preference.

We see user interfaces everywhere; we interact daily with them that we probably take them for granted. In this case not only for videogames but it is clear that it can be implemented in many other aspects like film and animation with the mere purpose of defining the aesthetic style, just like they did in Evangelion 3.0.

The understanding of how the UI works it's the easy part I would say; it's relatively easy to adapt the fonts and the look to something that fits the style of interaction. The difficult part comes when it come to the user's respond; how can you make sure that the user will find the interface intuitive, attractive and efficient? -- by understanding your target audience.
This could be a whole blog itself and it's probably too complicated, but I found this youtube video that might help to synthesize the whole topic:

Game industry in West Yorkshire

Because of personal reasons I recently started looking around for a new job. The idea of all the game companies being mainly spread around the London area was always in the back of my head and it was a bit disencouraging thinking that I wouldn't be able to get my foot on the industry before finishing this degree. After looking around I found out that there are quite a few companies around the Yorkshire area; in fact, more that what I expected. The website of Game Republic was quite helpful in this sense as the list of affiliate companies is quite large. Now some of them might be independent groups, but the list grows all the way to big companies like Rockstar Leeds.
I'll leave a list of the main companies and a link to their website:

Weaseltron entertainment

Sumo digital

Red Kite games

JAW (Just add water)

4 door lemon

Dubit Limited

Double eleven

Rockstar Games Leeds

Team 17

I've also contemplated some internships down south, as there seems to be more of them, but due to my 'legal' situation I'm afraid I'll have to pass on that.
So far I've applied for most of them, but haven't heard much back :(   (crossing fingers) 

Game Republic student showreal 2013 mascot

Great part of keeping active and always being challenged is to participate in contest, and even though it was last minute, I entered the Game Republic student showreel 2013 mascot contest. 

The idea was to create a logo with the iconic colours of Game Republic which are black, white and a blue/indigo. Understanding a bit of logo design, it's most likely that it will be printed in many surfaces, so the idea of having something as vectorised as possible is always a plus in this case. 

Having videogames itself as the theme, I wanted to portrait the connection that is created between the user and the fictional character; the idea of portraying yourself in the virtual world. 

I based my idea in one of my favourite time passing hobbies: Poker games. 

I've always find the designs of the original poker cards simple, yet amazing how it's double sided, with loads of crazy patterns. 

Now I didn't wanted to go too much in detail as the size of the logo has to be visible from tiny to massive printings, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible. 

With my passion for RPG's I ended up having a kid holding a game controller, while in the opposite side an alter ego of himself as a warrior. I manage to make it look understandable on either point of look. 

After finishing the lines, I played with different options of the blue/indigo colour to see where it would look more attractive.

This was the final submission, which surprisingly was the one picked for the Student showreel 2013!

I rarely win any competition, so this is a nice encouragement for me to keep trying competitions, for as small as they might seem. Looking forward to assist to the event and see this in actual printing :D 

Website opening! - getting out there

As part of my intention to get a job in the industry I opted for the option of building an image of myself as an artist, an nothing better to start with than doing it on the internet.
I've had for years had this "artistic" name 'Clover Lawn' (don't ask how or why please)  and because of emails and previous works I decided to stick to it.

Clover Lawn

There are several options out in the web of exposing your work and many of them work as a portfolio where the community can give you feedback. I pretty much have one of each, some have been there for a while, some of them I opened them and didn't really updated them, but I still always wanted to have my own website, not restricted or tide to any other rules.
After talking to my friend Sarah Turner (digital engagement consultant, web designer and manga artist), she finally helped me to build up my website and get everything ready to have it up and running.

It was all based in a template because I just wanted to have it simple and quick to start applying to companies as soon as possible and use it as my main portfolio.
After she build it, she tought me the basics to use Adobe Dreamweaver (and I mean basics, 'cus I'm a bit thick with this html stuff) and also guided me through the process of buying a domain and a host (used GoDaddy.com for it).

After it was functional, I did a few modifications and managed to get the hang of at least doing some few changes to it. Knowing myself I'd probably change it during the summer with some more time in hand just to tide up things and have it as personalised as possible, and more than anything, easy to navigate depending on my work.
At this point I have only a few examples of my work. After talking to Antony Ward he suggested me to have a more focused theme for it, but that it's something I'm struggling to focus at the moment. Certainly it requires a lot of tidying up, and more examples of stuff like environments and 3D work.
Hopefully I'll have some time over the summer to make those changes and maybe create a logo of my own to use in for business cards. Also I'll soon launch my facebook fanpage :D
Meanwhile, please have a look at my website and give me some feedback:

CloverLawn.me 

Just to clarify: it's (.me) not because I'm feeding my ego, but because it was one of the cheapest domains... 

DOTA2 - Character Art Guide

Beautiful Tumblr brought this up a while ago on my dashboard about a Game character guide from Valve's DOTA2 which at first I thought it was a PDF showing the characters sheets and as I haven't played the game I nearly skipped over.

After deciding to give it a go I notices that it was a general but very useful pipeline of the workflow when it comes to a character design and creation for a video game.
Some of the points they touch might seem quite basic, but some of them are certainly too basic that people usually forget them (and by people I mean me).
The topics go from silhouette, gradient and colour schemes to some geometry, UV mapping and item making tips.

Here's the link to the PDF which I'm planning to print for future reference. Once again, well done Valve.

Me? socialising... maybe

So I've never been too much of a social person, not that I don't want to, but my comfort zone is incredibly restricted to just me and a few people around me. That's it.
After a lot of encouragement over the fist year, I decided to take some initiative and start moving around and get to know people, selfishly just to make working contacts for my benefit.
That's how I started going to the All Animated group that just happen to take place around the corner from where I live. It was nice to see people attending and showing their work (I even showed the russian dolls I made on first year). Over all I didn't talk to many people at first. I stayed in a corner and the few that had the bravery to come an talk to me probably didn't get the right impression of me.
I blame my language barrier a bit as when I'm nervous I either talk a lot and fluently or it completely dies and people have to figure out what I'm trying to say, in most cases is the second one that takes place.
After that experience I decided to push myself a bit further and kept attending to those talks that carried on until Bradford Animation Festival where people would actually come and say hi to me! I suppose seeing me frequently caused that.

I also tried commenting on a few websites and on Linked in which resulted with getting contact with people all over the world in a friendly way. On The second social network I made a friend from the Midlands who just graduated from a Game related course and invited me to a group of his friends that do constant challenges to keep skills and practice up to date. I'm looking forward to keep improving my social skills and even if I don't get the dream job out of this at least I'm getting and interesting group creative friends.

iAnimate - game showreel

iAnimate
It's been a while since I saw this showreel and now that I'm starting to have a more define route towards the videogame industry I can't help but to want to give it a try to gaming animation.

After watching the video I went to their website just out of curiosity, but it looks like it's a decent animation online school and it had a section explaining the difference between featured animation and game animation.
The online last 14 weeks under a price of $2000 ... if I had the money I would definitelly look into booking in. Meanwhile I'll probably experiment on my own and watching free online tutorials.

Power to the Pixels exhibition

Before the Christmas break we had a public exhibition for our projects done for Game Art & Machinima.
It was quite cool the idea of having your work shown to the public and more than that just the experience of preparing for it it's quite different than when you do a presentation on a classroom.

The advertisement took place without much time in advance which I think was the reason for it being a bit quite. Another reason I think was the location; despite the fact that is in an area where there's and artistic community, I don't think it was the right one to attract public in general.  
It was cold and I was tired, so probably it wasn't the best of the moods to go out and network, but it certainly was an incentive to start considering in the future as seeing your work on walls sure feels nice.

Bradford Animation/Game Festival 2012

This year I finally got the chance to assist to the whole part of events that we had planned (unlike last year) and this year the plan was to attend to most of the animation related talks.
It turned out that most of the program was focused on independent and student films, and it's not that I'm not interested or anything like that, but by this point I knew I had more interest on Video Games so I ended up booking extra talks in the Game part of the event taking place on Bradford University's campus. Bioware, Double Negative, Urban Environments and even Valve. I think I was quite pleased with this year's festival.
The talks where quite amazing; some inspiring, some interesting, some...not so much, but either way I think for next year I'll try to get a hold of the itinerary sooner and plan a more defined route focusing on games again.
I scanned my notes hopping that if anyone wants to have a look can read them, and some of them have even some doodles. Enjoy.

Citadel

With the Leeds Film Festival taking place I couldn't resist to go and see as many films as possible, but unfortunately, because of work and other reasons the amount of screenings that I could actually manage to see was extremely limited.
Despite that, Citadel was a film that a friend was really excited to see, and being on of the highlights of a 12-hour marathon of horror films I grew a lot of interest on it.
Before the screening, there was a brief introduction where a man explain a bit of the directors reasoning of making this film and how it was inspired by being victim of a vandalic act when he was young causing in him a severe case of agoraphobia.
The man also mention that among the several horror films he has seen before this was probably one of the best ones; now talking about growing expectation? Well he did a good job on that.

Directed by Ciarán Foy, the film started with the right foot: Tommy and his pregnant wife are about to move out from an undesirable building to move to a new council house but on the process she gets brutally attack by a gang right in front of him. The baby is born, but a few months pass and his wife still in a coma in a hospital. At this point his is suffering from a terrible agoraphobia that follows him in a tormenting way. When his daughter gets taken away from him, he has to face a big task to try to get her back.

Up until this point I found really impressive how they manage to transform and transmit the anxiety and sense of fear that agoraphobia was tormenting the character and not to mention that the actor was doing a fantastic work. I also like the fact that they didn't go for fancy shots or lenses for many of the inner scenes, instead they keep a realistic and simple screen play.
Roughly around half of the film is when all the suspense and horror vanished on me as the the agoraphobic fear represented with this gang suddenly seems transformed into a zombie film.
Weird whining sounds, twitching slow moves and poor makeup really put me down to what could have been a good psychological thriller.
From my point of view, the film went too far and too solid on the representation of this phobia which is a shame for such a good start and performance. I keep blaming the guy who builded up my expectations of the film from the beginning but still Neither me or my friend thought was worth to recommend.

http://www.leedsfilm.com/films/citadel/

SWOT

So having a bit of a talk about framekors for business analysis the other day, we came across with the SWOT analysis which stands for Strengths Weakness Opportunities Threats.
It is basically a chart designed to measure ideas, business units or propositions, but we where assigned to target ourselves and work based on our abilities in relationship with the industry.
At the end this is what I came up with:

When I was thinking about what to fill it with it really makes you understand some of your internal aspects that,  on a professional environment, would make a difference between success and failure.
In my case, half of my problems refer to personal issues facing towards insecurities about my work; the other half is related to my lack of communication skills.
Deep down my lack of social interaction and approachability might be related again to personal insecurities, but rather than making a big internal change that might take forever, I decided to put on a professional mask that would allow me to interact in a level that is acceptable for the industry.
To help me out with that I started reading this book I got from the library:

Improve your communication skills by Alan Barker

I'll make a post later on about some of my ideas after I finish it. So far it seems very practical and intuitive, so I suppose the real challenge will be to put it down to practice. 

If anyone has notice any other strengths/weakness/ opportunities/ threats please let me know ;)