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. 

Pandore

On the clouds of the mythic Mount Olympus, a young girl unleashes a dangerous monster from a mysterious box. Is he match for the little devil that set him free? 

A pretty cute and funny animation produced at GOBELINS, l'ecole de l'image in 2009. The closest style I can think of is Zelda wind waker, but never the less, I'm a big fan of this kind of animation. The texturing matches the style in a unique way and the whole cartoony way is really charming.
The monster in specific is the character that I believe had more work on, as his movements are really well done, it has a lot of personality and the design itself is fantastic.

Credits: Created, Directed and Animated by Meryl Franck, Elen Le Tannou, Nicolas Caffarel, Marion Stinghe, Benoit Guillaumot. Sound design by Vincent Hazard. Voice of monster by Das Panzer Benz, Girl Voice by Kaycie Chase. Music by Pascal Franck (Mathilde Alloubert on harpe, Isabelle Hebrard on flutes, Gae Ascal (mastering and remix). Sound Effects by Andre Fevre, Sound engineer Clement Naline.

Experience :D

After getting quite engaged with some social networks where it's possible to publish some of your works, I got a note on my CGHub account.
It was from the company called Gameloft; a leading international publisher and developer of videogames for mobile phones, smart phones and downloadable games for consoles. They saw my profile and asked me to work for them. I was really surprise, as I haven't developed a proper game portfolio, but at the same time I was really happy to see that there's some potential for me in the industry, and not to mention that finally me being bilingual was paying off.
The happiness didn't last much as they where really eager to get me to start work asap, in their main office in Madrid, full time...
Obviously I had to turn it down, as I could't just leave my studies without even finishing the first year (I need to finish at least one degree lol). 
I asked them for a potential summer internship and we still in touch trough emails. At least I'll try to keep the connection in case they still have a space for me in 2 years time.

Even thought after that disappointment, a few weeks after I got contacted, through deviantArt this time, by a group of young blokes all around the world that where planning to start a project from 0. Being a small group of inexperienced people I thought about joining them so I could try a bit of different positions (mainly concept artist, but also can try modelling, texturing, animation, etc.)  and get the chance to get some experience without the pressure of failing for a AAA company.
So far I haven't contributed much, but only because I've been working on the final projects, but during the summer I'll make sure to update as much as I can about the concepts and contributions I make.
This team still requires a lot of work to be done, so even thought I haven't been asked I'll try my best to bring some of the organization that is missing.
At the moment if feels nice to have a weekly meeting with the whole group and see what other people are doing and enhance the communication within the different disciplines.
This project will be supported by the a German government's project once the game is 90% done and ready for some user tests.

The concept of Architecture

Architecture still is a very strong aspect when it comes to ideas and concepts that I've been generating along the year, and even though I never finished that degree, I still cherish the knowledge that I acquired during those 4 years. Specially now, regardless of the aspect of my future focus, I've started to understand the multiple uses of a game engine and endless limitations of concept art.

Is obvious that when it comes to making illustrations to base a scenography of a game, film or animation is always relatively easier to just draw a picture or perspective in which the building goes well with the style and it looks amazing in the background. But it certainly needs a lot of thought once an interactions with the environment is required.
For a reason it is a profession; the level of detail, functionality, design and materials have to harmonise in a whole composition. The aspects that probably a game designer don't have worry are the realistic factor and the costs, but even the physics and materials play an important fact.
The functionality takes a big role specially when a building itself is a game level. Places have to be logically functional, zoned and has to make sense with the exterior.

Maybe it's not very used now a days among actual architectural projects, but old style hand-made plans where certainly a piece of art, that if it was part of any media project could certainly be part of the concept art.

A part that has got me really interestes came when a friend from my old degree asked me to do her some renders to use in her final project. At the moment was kind of a joke as she was half way done it, but it did made me realize the potential that a game engine like Unity3D could have for the presentation of projects. Obviously someone has already thought of that... and I was amazed for the results of some companies and it was nice to know the effort that their putting to replicate a more realistic urban environment and an easy way to work with natural aspects.
Check out the video underneath where the company ENODO uses cryENGINE to create a really nice urban landscape:

Pixel Art

According to Wikipedia:

   Pixel Art is a form of digital art, created though the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old (or relatively limited) computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobila phone games are mostly pixel art. 

Image filters (such as blurring or alpha-blending) or tools with automatic anti-aliasing are considered not valid tools for pixel art, as suck tools calculate new pixel values automatically, contrasting with the precise manual arrangement of pixel associated with pixel art. 

 Don't know if anyone notice before, but the current logo of my blog is made by pixel art. I'm not very experienced in making it, but I certainly have a big crush on people who know how to work on it. 

Sadly for me, there aren't many people out there that specialise in this form of graphics, and with technology evolving, even in mobile devices, I can see my fandom staying in memories of some of my favourite games like Final Fantasy advance or KH: Chains of memories. 

As a working process I must admit it requires a lot of dedication, as it requires a perfect idea of what you want to do and apply it in detail, pixel level detail. 

Most of this pixel art video games use an isometric view or parallel projection usually working on a 45°/30° ratio meaning that it's not a "true" isometric, but it had to be done like this due to the limitations of raster graphics that 8 and 16 bit games had. Now a days all of this can be corrected by using anti-aliasing. 

A complicated aspect I found when working on this style is that you have to have a extremely clear idea of the size of the final image. Because the work is done on pixels, the chances of stretching the image without getting weird looking or distortions are very low, so it does have a really high level of planing. 

The fact that people are using this style less and less every day doesn't take off the credit of some magnificent recent work some people have done. I hope I can manage to fit a future project where I can work with this technique and demonstrate that even with  an "old fashion" way of working the possibilities are and a good aesthetic of a game/animation can be achieved. 

Limitless Hiroyuki

 

Hiroyuki Takahashi (タカハシヒロユキ) is a Japanese designer that has no limits.
His work has clearly established his style as playful, colourful and over the top. His compositions are masterly composed and every design he makes he works in every detail on the character, for the character and around it, ending up with really dynamic yet simple piece of work where chaos and technology seem to be iconic of his.

The mechanical precision in his vector lines gives to his work the possibility of multiplying its effect and working along with his iconic patterns and his fashion sense the outcome of his work really stands out.
It is definitely a very attracting style, which like in the picture below, I think it could work very well as character design or even as a concept style for a video game. Would love to see more games with more colourful and surreal styles rather than just semi realistic. Make sure to visit his website as he does loads of other stuff and collaborations with other artist.

Bayonetta - Creative and sexy

As a result of going crazy on Ebay I bought the videogame Bayonetta for PS3. Reason for buying it was that I remember a while ago some friends talking about it as a really really good game. After looking for some images for the game I thought they only bought the game for this: 

I thought I gave it a try after reading some good reviews and because it came out a while ago, it was cheap. 

My first impression = fanservice. Bayonetta as the main character is pretty much the attraction itself. Cool and really original fighting system that only makes the witch dance around and end up in provocative positions. By looking at the cinematic I could have sworn that the animators used strippers to capture the sexiness in all her moves. 

But once I manage to get over it, I realise that despite some weird looking camera angles at some points, most part of the game has a good cinematic study as they way they drive the storyline becomes really engaging. 

Another part that I really enjoyed from it was the concept itself. It's nice to see a character being in the evil side fighting against angels which have a really unique concept that breaks stereotypes. 

Here's a video I found from the producers that get to explain a bit more about the concept in general: 

I haven't finished the game, but will definitely will finish it this summer as I'm finding it really original and with a quite addictive game play. 

Daniel Brown

Daniel Brown is a Director base in Seattle that has cough my attention in my because of his creativity and well performed ideas.
The clip that I like the most at the moment is the animation for the advert for the Seattle International Film Festival 2010 (embedded underneath) 
Make sure to check out his other videos on his Vimeo account and to follow him on twitter and/or tumblr

Creative industries

Having the perspective of living in a 3rd world country I can understand the pride that people must take knowing that their country is doing as well as the UK. It is nice to feel that I took the right desicion to choose this country for my higher education, but what will happen once I finish my degree is certainly something that wont be affected by it.

Entering to the sector in the Creative Industry certainly is competitive, and as in most cases only the strongest candidates manage to stand out.
Only in the UK there are 723,000 people working in Games, software development and online publishing in over 75,000 business around the country. It's also pretty interesting to know that I'm surrounded by multiple sectors that support the Digital arts in which I'm involved.
Nevertheless, that is no warranty of us getting a job during or after our studies and sadly for me I tend to have less opportunities for having the burden of not being part of the EU. Either way, I'll have to work double hard to proof myself to the industry and hopefully be part of a good working team.

Sectors & Services - who does what?

The UK economy 

• 7th Largest in the world
• 3rd largest in Europe
• One of the most globalised countries
• London is the largest financial centre equal with New York
• Largest industries - aerospace, pharmaceuticals, North sea oil and gas. 

What's an industry sector? 

It's an area of the economy with relate products or services that can be splinted into these main sub categories:

• Primary: Extraction and harvesting of natural resources.
• Secondary: Processing, manufacturing and construction.
• Third: Knowledge and services. 

Another way to see them in relation to the society in general is the primary which compiles the Public services that are publically owned or state owned. The secondary includes all the private owned services that usually run for profit. The third ones are mainly all the community owned businesses that produce no profit and are mainly voluntary, like charities.

The Last of Us

First... take a look a this trailer:


... I think...it's awesome!
After I saw this on Tumblr, I couldn't help myself to find EVERYTHING I could about this game and the makers of it.
It turned out to be the latest project from Naughty Dog company called The Last of Us.
Naughty Dog is a game company that officially started in 1994 with the well famous Crash Bandicoot title.
Their latest success is one of the biggest titles for PS3; Uncharted, a title that is universally acclaim and prise for its storytelling, graphics and cinematic quality.
One of the first titles I got with my PS3 was Uncharted 3 (I just got my PS3 recently) and even though I thought it wasn't my type of game, I felt curious to try it because of its graphics quality. After trying it for a bit I realised that it was much more than a linear-shooting game but it had an incredible cinematic direction that merged perfectly with the controls and the story.
That's is why I can't wait for this game to come out. So far from the trailer, I can tell that the story is going to stand out and can't help to feel a lot of personality in the characters.
This is the synopsis that is on the official website:

Abandoned cities reclaimed by nature. A population decimated by a modern plague. Survivors are killing each other for food, weapons; whatever they can get their hands on.
Joel, a brutal survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together if they hope to survive their journey across the US. 

Last thing to mention: the concept art is absolutely fantastic!

Social Networks

I have to say... I'm not a very social human being...
Before coming to this country I completely refused to get a Facebook account and only had a MSN one which I rarely used. Networks like Twitter and My space seem to me like networks full of gossip and random stuff that would only help me lose my time.

After coming here, I had no option rather than get used to use Facebook and Skype to keep in touch with friends and family, but never took it too serious.
Starting this course, I felt oblige to open a twitter account but decided to limit it to only follow people in my field of interests.
After thinking about the industry itself and how to start getting immerse in it, I started using more frequently other media that allowed me to start making connections that eventually turned into a social turning point in my life.
Deviantart, CGHub, Pixiv, Tumblr, Twitter, Linkedin, Flickr and Blogger itself became my daily way to connect with loads of people, some of them in a working way, some others who I share interest, but all of them, in their own way, have keep me informed and awake to what's around me, helping me in this way, to keep going forward.

I realised that being in a Digital media environment requires spaces to share, publish and discuss with people related to it, and also to create links with other disciplines that will allow to expand my future projects.
As part of the rule of thirds to be successful in any industry, the social aspects complements and important part of it, complementing the showcase and professional.
Some of the steps I'm currently taking to improve my social aspects are:

• Be social
• Visit other blogs and comment
• Respond to comments
• Be generous
• Subscribe 
• Share
• Know what I have posted about myself
• Assume EVERYTHING is permanent
• Be a conduit
• Be original
• Create a news feed
• Credit my sources
• Use keywords (tags and labels)
• Interview somebody
• Post frequently
• Do not copy and paste
• Stick with it!!!

Making of Two Worlds

Even thought I believe video games and animation is more of my focus, I still find amazing and extremely interesting to look at some of the good visual effects  that companies like Digital Domain do.
This company is basically one of my favourites in the field, and the portfolio they have is incredibly huge and with the highest standard.

Together with Sony, they made this advert called 'Two Worlds' as part of the promotion for the 3D products. Using the slogan "Don't just watch. Feel" I think that the producers had a really accurate vision of the final product.
The video below show's the process or making of Two worlds, and it's always fascinating to get to see all the people involved and the range of disciplines that have to work together to achieve such unique standards.

Run, run, run!

For our PPP project I've been thinking about loads of stuff that I've learned over the last year and certainly it's been difficult to come up with one concrete idea. 

After a while I decided to start thinking about the stuff that I haven't done over the last year and that certainly is...excersise. It's been a year since I stopped running and going to the gym and after having an afternoon talk with a friend of mine that's been training really hard to run for a charity event on Manchester it kind of inspire me to do something related to it. 

I don't really have time to do anything in fancy in 3D so I'll stick with some sketchy 2D animation and to get some inspiration I went on youtube and found some inspiring Nike videos: 

Final Product

Final web product :)
The music by the altar was made by my good friend Manuel. It was awesome finally working with him in a project.
I hope you can give me some feedback, and just remember that is just meant to be an environment, so don't expect much of it.  FEEDBACK PLEASE!!!

Unity Web Player | Quetzalcoatl_WEB

« created with Unity »

Some progress VI

Almost there!
Just wanted to add some concept art, sketches and the floor plans and elevations for the environment :)

Some progress V

Woking on my plants for the scene, I ended up spending too much time on details for some of them. 

At first I tried to do all hand painted, because I wanted to get this dull scene to look all full of colour, but then time was running low and had to start working on other assets. 

After putting everything on Unity, I noticed that the normal maps I did for every plant where useless, as the shaders that accept back face culling dont accept any kind of bump mapping. 

Also, never thought of combining the meshes in maya to avoid having too many objects in the scene. 

Once I put all the plants in place the scene began to get a little bit laggy. The only thing I could have done at this point was going back to maya and combine them into one mesh, but because of the time limit (and illness) I'll leave it like this for now, as the important part at this point is more composition rather than efficiency. 

Morals

When I was quite young my dad took me to a game shop to get a new game for my Nintendo 64 (you can guess it was ages ago) and from all the covers that where familiar from all the mainstream series available, a particular one caught my attention:

Yes. Harvest Moon. I think I picked it because the box was pretty. Started playing it, and doing my best to keep up with my limited english at the time as there was a lot of dialogue. The game was completely charming and different from all the other games I had. It was peaceful, fun and challenging in its own way. I was happy growing my own farm until a friend came over and started judging the game of being boring because you didn't get to kill anyone. 

I guess he was right; the most dramatic part of the game was when one of your cows died of age. The level of violence wasn't enough for him and many other kids. 

I have played and loved all kind of games, and understanding that it's a matter of taste to choose a genre of game in specific, but I personally thing there's a limit for everything. 

Having the game industry evolving quickly in every sense, the responsibility of a game maker becomes stronger. I didnt noticed this as an issue before, as I know I go for the kind of games that usually touch more the fantasy side of stories, but looking backwards, I have played some pretty sick games before and some of those probably wouldnt have been appropriate for my age. I took it well, just as a game, but thinking of the many possibles scenarios in which kids from all over the world could digest the experience in a different way due to cultural aspects, life style and other personal experiences makes me think that probably a there was no need for the amount of violence to enjoy the game. 

Certainly I've heard more than once my parents' generation saying to me "your generation is twisted!" or "how can you like that?". Why was murder and body parts was so normal for me and not for older generations? Did games like Doom, Mortal Kombat or Killer Instinct thought me that? 

Perhaps.

I think most people agree that when you start growing up you see younger generations and think how messed up they are. And probably they are, but it's certainly not their fault, and so far is not so bad, but until when is this going to stop. There is an obvious increment of violence and along with the semi realistic graphics this will definitely not lead to something good. Specially as next generation consoles are approaching to new and more complex game experiences that can cause some sort of damage to the wrong audience. 

I've always found this overly done violence a little bit unattractive for my ideas of games or animations, but watching the documentary of Moral Kombat did made me more conscience about the general picture and the big influence a game can be to younger minds and how much responsibility the new generation of game makers have.