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 ;)  

I want it all...

As the second year begins more "pressure" and thoughts about what will come for the future start popping in many heads.

When we were asked what skills beyond this course we would like to develop or learn loads of things get to my mind: 

• 2d Concept art: Get more techniques and opportunities to try a more artistic conceptualisation and speed painting. Colour theory, anatomy and other softwares that could help me develop more this skill. I still feel the need to change styles and learn to be more flexible in my styles. 

• 3d Modelling: As much as I admire and get more and more attached to Maya, I'd love to learn a more artistic way of modelling. Over the summer I did my best at trying using Zbrush; many tutorials and tips from other artist helped me to get started and understand the basic ideology behind the software, but I still find it a bit difficult to work with. I just installed Mudbox which should have much more compatibility with Maya yet I haven't had the time to get into bigger walkthroughs as I did with Pixologic's software. 

• Rendering or Game engines: I've seen other shows reels of processionals that develop amazing stuff in open sources such as UDK. Unity3D is perfect for me as I know very little about programming, so I wouldn't dare at this stage to get to a software that could be less user friendly, but I'd love to be able to experience a more powerful game engine. I've also heard so much about CryEngine and other AAA game engines that makes me curious to try them. 

• Photorealistic Rendering: As much as I love a cartoonish/ stylised way of animation, I can help to admire amazing cinematics and games that have high quality CG. I know it all depends on the team work, ability and budget of companies, but I'd love to learn to make textures of high standards, bake shadows, creation of normals, etc.

There are many other things I'd love to get my head around like the modelling and animation of hair and cloth, more controlled 3D particles (water, controlled light, etc) and also I'd like to know how to be more social in the media, but now that I'm reading all this is just clear that I feel like I want to do everything and know it all. Understanding this still makes me want to try a bit of all this, probably with the purpose of understanding more of things and at the same time to manage to narrow down the path that I want to follow and therefore train more in a more specific area.

Starting a game cinematic

As for our assignment of creating a cinematic using Unity3D as a base game engine, I ended up forming a group with Sophie  and Ryan. It's pretty exciting to work with them again as I know they're really talented and creative people, which more than intimidating me, I feel like I have to give my best to achieve quality standards and also to manage to produce something worth it for a portfolio. 

The three of us are pretty much wanting to try a bit of everything; feeling confident with strong points and at the same time trying to explore the parts on which we are a bit insecure. So to assign the roles basically ended up being quite beneficial (or at least that's how I see it) as we all get to bring to the table ideas about the same points and we get to choose or mix some of them to create a better one. 

Down side of this: it creates an extra effort for all of us to be doing the same thing as at the end the work gets basically done twice (or three times in this case). At this stage of coming up with ideas it all works out for the best as the more ideas we have, be more we get to explore different possibilities. Could it keep working like this for other stages like modelling, rigging and even animating? Who knows? For the moment being I couldn't help myself to create an excel working plan to try to keep things on track and more important, on time. (this is some of the many remaining of my architectural studies) 

This is something that we're all working on and will keep cha. As none of us is really good with communication I thought it would be easier to have everything in a written form to avoid confusions or misunderstandings.  Therefore we created a Facebook group and shared a folder on our Dropbox account to keep files and information flowing as much as possible. 

At least from my part I'll try to do my best and avoid dragging the group down.... and that would be much easier if it wasn't for this damn cold

Looking forward to show some of the sketches / ideas! 

Creation of an Alien

So getting back into Maya, our exercises now is to model, UV map, rig and animate an alien based on a reference t pose that we all got.
We also got some pictures that gave us an idea of how a good topology should look like for this model (mainly because there's not one definite solution).

I think the hardest part for me is to actually begin. After losing the fear of making mistakes I pretty much modelled the half of the character without too much trouble.
There where a few places where I had to go over and over. I was trying my best to get my head around the junctions like elbows and knees where animating could become a problem if it wasn't done properly.
I suppose this is what scares me the most: Having done a lot of work just to find out that I've done something wrong and having to go back and redo it. More than laziness I believe is something irrational about insecurities. I hope I can get over that in the future, but at on the bright side, I think I'm paying more attention to many details as I go along and learning to spot mistakes in earlier stages. (I have to the take out the positive of EVERYTHING) 

After that I just mirrored the geometry (fix some minor issues with the crotch) and Voilà! we got a decent looking alien. It looks much better on the smooth version, but as long as it works along with the rigging the I'm happy about it.

After that and creating the bit of the inside of the mouth, I then moved to UV map it. Because of the Russian dolls project I feel a bit more familiar with UV mapping and I didn't struggle much other than splitting the head while maintaining the ratio of the eyes (for as bad as that sounds). 
It isn't mandatory to give it a texture in specific, as all that matters is to have a rigged and fully animated character by the end of this exercise, but I might give it a go just for the sake of it.

Back from a long summer...

When I try to think about my summer all that comes to my mind is work, work and more work (but at the restaurant, so it was boring).
Never the less, there where a few highlights on it.
Just at the beginning of it I had the chance to go to the closing gala film of the 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival where I watch the European premier of the newest film from Disney Pixar: Brave.
Not going to lie, not only Edinburgh was beautiful and full of life and events, but the film was absolutely fantastic! A master piece in my opinion. Also, having the opportunity of shake hands with Brenda Chapman, Robbie Coltrane and Kelly MacDonald was just added extra token to it.

After my disappointment when I found out that my skydiving session was moved to the 21st of October, I decided to get creative and started a commission challenge with Sophie, Ryan, Sarah and Lija in which it gave me the chance to practice a bit in some aspects that I find myself lazy to doing on my own.
Created this character, made an expression sheet and started a modelling on 3D on Zbrush (this last one didn't go as well as the rest).
Also I made a background concept, and even though I failed at putting colour, the outcome thought me a lot that will be useful for future projects that require any sort of structural background. This one in particular ended up being too technical, but it only reflects my influence from architecture in which every detail is important. I'd love to try something more lose and sketchy for future projects; something that gets a traditional media feeling.

The last highlight of my summer was to join and attend to the first meeting of All Animated, a new network for animation up north. It was a good opportunity to gather around people who do animation on a professional level, to see where my work stands, to hear some news in the industry, make connections and at the end, to grow some balls and show my work to other people.
It was a good starting point and I believe I will continue to attend to them. Hopefully in the future I manage to get more contacts and possibles collaborations with people in the industry, and also an extra place to show up my uni work and get some feedback from a third party.

Game art

Over the years video games have improve and created a more dynamic way to tell stories within the same game. Trailers, intros, cutscenes and other cinematographic processes have been used to generate a deeper connection with the player. 

I still remember when some games will reward you with some pixel-still images back in my SNES days. Soon after pre-rendered scenes took over my attention and even now a days I still find them an impressive part of games even when it finishes and the real graphics come up again. 

My personal favourite for making me scream like a girl with trailers and cutscense will always be Square Enix (if it wasn't obvious). Their work with the in-game graphics is fantastic, but the quality, effort and detail put on cutscenes is just outstanding. As examples (plural as I couldn't make up my mind in just one) I have the opening of Kingdom Hearts 2 and Final Fantasy Dissidia.

Now this opening is not only beautiful but it also works as a summary of the previous 2 games (Kingdom Hearts and Chains of memories). The way they combined it and made look like a music video without loosing any important parts of the previous stories is remarkable, but at the same time I wouldn't consider it as an introduction for someone who didn't play the previous entries; it was simply a quick compilation that clearly only satisfied fans of the franchise (me). 

When I heard they where making a fighting game using all the main characters and villains from the Final Fantasy franchise I thought Dissidia was going to be just a way to abuse the huge fandom of the characters and sell something badly made. Sadly I wasn't THAT wrong. 

The video above is the intro for the first entry of this new franchise, Dissidia. Again, beautiful pre-render graphics that in my opinion look absolutely fantastic, specially when you think that it will be an entry for a portable console. There was no way the PSP could ever run any graphics like this ones, but my surprise was that the game actually look really pretty. Way too pretty if you ask me and it didn't took long for me to discover the reason. The game was just like the intro; just the bunch characters from all the games you loved fighting together but with just a really forced story behind it. The fighting system was a bit odd and it contained loads of slow motion attacks that where only useful to feast your eyes with the gorgeous characters. 

Sadly I bought the game and loved it at the end. 

As for in built cutscenes I think my personal favourite at the moment is anything related with Journey for PS3. I still think that ThatGameCompany made a great job with the feeling given by the game and it is reflected in every point of the game. I couldn't find a video with my favourite part of the game (sliding though sand with a sunset in the background) but here is the trailer of the game that gives a good idea of the game's concept. This is a concrete proof that realistic graphics or pre-rendered scenes are not needed to achieve a majestic cinematographic product, and even when the whole world around you is a dessert.