Tutorials, tutorials ... endless tutorials

Knowing that my dissertation is a blend of a tutorial and a case study, I had no option but to learn the pipeline as much as I could in a short period of time. At this point I got Photoshop or any other drawing softwares and techniques tamed for the purpose (maybe not to the standards I want, but they'll do the trick).
Maya as a 'put assets together' software I'm pretty sure I'll manage at my level. The problem was Zbrush; I've tried this software before and the interface scared me away. now that I tried to go back to it I decided to target it from 0. Started looking at tutorials on digital tutors and opted for taking the basic Introduction to Zbrush, a 6 hr tutorial to teach you the basics an also introduce you to some of the useful tools and functions that Zbrush has. After finishing those I started to look at some other such as Pipeline Integration with Maya and Zbrush and Creating Game Characters with Maya and Zbrush but the more I spend looking at this tutorials the less I felt I was practising. Looking at the 169 tutorials that Digital Tutors have ONLY for Zbrush was a bit overwhelming and thinking that I had CGCircuit tutorials to watch as well (recommend this one in particular) and other 13 GB of other random tutorials I found online. I felt for a second there was not enough time to watch them all even if I had double the amount of time to do it!
The amount of tutorials in Magazines and in some dissertations I was reading felt like it was just an endless and even found myself watching tutorials while having dinner :-/
For a while it was all I could think of until I broke down and decided to just crack on with work. I still ended up going back to some tutorials because I knew I could do things I just forgot how. I felt like I didn't target this process the best way; I should have been working along with the tutorials and pause them when needed, but at the time I thought they were going way to fast for me to catch up their speed (specially when they come with an amazing model and say 'I did this 3 months ago'...)
Hopefully this won't affect much of my practical work, but I am proud of managing to stand at least 26 hours of pure tutorials without perishing.

(yes...this is how horrifying it looks....and this are just from ONE website! )

TIGA GameHack 2013

Not long ago I got in contacted by Steve Cusi whose a graduated a generation above mine and who I met on a couple of Game Republic socials. He asked me if I wanted to be part of a team leaded by Nellyvision and support him on TIGA's GameHack.
This game jam was a 24 hour event in which you had to deliver a playable product under certain categories each with different requirements. One member of the team is going to china soon, and because I was the only new member of the team it seamed that they already had a concept in mind; a platform game that aims to teach Chinese. This was certainly not easy as it is a complicated language, but we were determined to not include any English at all. Just like we felt when we where thinking on how to target this subject, we decided to go for a foreign little girl who gets lost in the streets of China. She doesn't understand the language or characters so her imagination is the only thing that will get her around.

An so we arrived on Saturday morning having a small reception followed by the introduction of the different categories. I was surprised of the amount of people that where there! more than 35 teams where just in the same building from 3 to 6 members each, and also this jam was running along at the same time at the Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland. It was pretty scary to hear that most teams are quite recurrent to this kind of events and that some previous winners were among the teams.

 (yei with my super blurry pictures)
The official jam started at 11 am finishing at 11 am on Sunday. It felt pretty hardcore, but at the same time I was impressed of how well organized it was; there was more food that you could eat, tea and coffee at all times and even resting areas for those who needed a power nap. At first I didn't know what to expect as this was my first event, so I brought with me heavy clothing, sleeping bag and provisional snacks; my idea was of a big cold warehouse. Lovely surprise to find that Pinewood Studios provided us with a lovely place to work! (it was like a big mansion!)
Nisha Valand, who organised the whole event was there the whole time and incredibly supportive by having everything we needed and cheering people up.

My part on the role of making assets ended up creating and animating Envy, the main character. Pretty shocked to think that the animation had to be hand drawn and that I had to do it as quick as possible to start helping with the rest of the assets. The concept started as a boy, but taking in count that there weren't many girls at the competition we decided to go for a girl. colour scheme and composition might not have been the best but there was a lot of pressure on finishing it quickly.

I had to tile the animation in a way that suited the coders, something I've seen before but never done myself. Another factor was having to work with very specific resolutions all along.

After finishing the character (say it was finished, but it had so much to be polished!) I went to create as many assets as possible. Some of them where important part of the game play, so the had to have a small animation, some others where just used as platforms.

It certainly was a whole different experience to see how much you can do in such a short period of time. The game had some complicated mechanics as it was thought to be used on touch devices, such as drawing chinese characters on the screen on the right order to pass the level. It was far from finishing, but we managed to get something playable for the three minute demostration at the end. 

Seeing the work of everyone else made me realised many  things about where I was standing and what I need to achieve. Certainly something to look in the future and improve in time. There where many great games out there, certainly some that might as well be already a game on it's own. It was probably the lack of sleep that put me in a negative mood by thinking that we weren't cut out for any nominations, but oh! suprice to hear the team's name being awarded for the Most Awesome Game! 

Couldn't believe it! it was awkward to stand in front of people and get a picture and stuff. To this point I can't even remember what we won, but it was sure enough to know that our efforts where so worth it! (a day of motion capture ...somewhere...or something like that).

We came back home straight away and by the time I went to bed it was nearly 40 hours without sleep...certainly not something I would to every weekend, but will definitely make sure to go at least once a year! :D 

The coders wanted to tweak the game a bit more so hopefully I'll have a web version to post soon ;) 

Thanks Nellyvision for the oportunity!!!

Character Design - ideas and colour

As I mention before I was basing my inspiration on some of my favourite JRPGs and for easement I wanted to go for a stylised character to avoid having to force a realistic style and end up with something with poor quality. There where loads of simple ideas like the ones below, but I wanted to go for something somehow generic or standard for the'hero'. 

The image below is an idea that I got quite attached to; a guy who's hair transform into feathers. Without thinking much on the possible background of the character, it could easily fit a race/village of bird-like people. Base on this I made some variations trying to see different noses. The middle one being the 'standard' looking one and on both sides some larger and pronounced ones. I also wanted to play with colours, and because I'm quite indecisive I opted for putting the chart below online and ask people's opinion.
At the end the one that people liked the most was N2 and W3. After opting to go for the most generic face I was excited for the feathers, yet I grew soon scared of them; if it ends up animated and on a game engine they need to bounce and move as well! If the animation and physics don't work fine it will look stiff and not believable. Not that I didn't like the challenge, but the point of this project was not to kill me of over work (I think). In short, I chickened out.

At the end I went for the same face but put a short hair. not sure yet about the colour scheme for the hair, as I don't see the point of going for crazy colour as it only look good when it was made of feathers. Once I have the full body done I'll probably play around with more colour schemes.

Inspiration / moodboard

For the initial ideas for the character I'm making I couldn't help to rely on my all time fabourite games such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. Among all the genres of games JRPGs have always been my favourite ones. Also at the same time the E3 trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3 came out and it blew my fandom to very high levels.

I took a lot of images from the internet to create a moodboard. Most of the graphics are from recent entries, trying to get some angles and textures that are relevant. Obviously the images are rendered from the high poly versions or the ones rendered for cinematics, but others like the Agni's Philosophy are made on a real time engine, so the high quality of textures still is there. 

The reason why I love this style it's because they are loyal to the stylisation of the concept art and yet with the textures and lightning they manage to get a result that is believable and appealing. 

I know I'm aiming to high for this project for now, but other wise I won't push myself to get something I really admire. 

Clay modelling and workshops

After discussing with my tutors about my 3D sculpting topic, they suggested me to give it a go and try real sculpting so...why not!? 

I went down to the ceramic workshops a few times to get inducted on health & safety, tools and materials that I have access to. Despite the looks of other people studying fine art when I said I came from Games and Animation, I got quite a lot of good feedback and tips from both professors and other people using the facilities. 

On the fist quick attempt I literally just played for a bit trying to quickly get a face out and try different tools at the same time as I got familiar with the white clay. It didn't turned out well; the clay was far too dry towards the end, the size was too small to get any details in and I couldn't get symmetry in the eyes, but at least I knew what I needed to fix next time.

        

For my second attempt I went for something a lot larger just to manage to get details in. By this point I already watched some tutorials about the anatomy of the face, and even though I haven't mastered it yet it gave me a good idea of where to start. 

I used a base this time that was attached to another rotating base making it a lot easier to work with. I also used brushes and water to keep the clay to a good level of moisture. I brought with me a copy of the concept to help me get the right stylised proportions, although at the end I thing the width of the face was a bit thinner than it should. 

The hair was definitely something that it's hard to model and still get the filling of it being thin and floaty, so at least I know that for the 3D version I will make it with planes instead of model it on Zbrush. 

At the end I did my best to get a smooth skin. The eyes weren't necessarily symmetrical and I don't even know how to describe how awful the ears where, but for my second attempt I was quite pleased with it. 

To wrap it up, because I didn't follow any professional sculpting technique of making it hollow, I had no chance to fire it, so I opted for the option of applying a coat of PVA to give it a glossy look and help to preserve it as much as possible. 

I still haven't come up with a name for the character, but either way I'm happy to have tried this and get a grip on how some sculpting before jumping to the digital one.