Fairytale's interpretation

Fairytale

1
a : a story (as for children) involving fantastic forces and beings (as fairies, wizards, and goblins) —called also fairy story

b : a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending2
: a made-up story usually designed to mislead

The interpretation of old stories or fairytales over the history surpases barriers of what the original tales was probably intended to. We have all heard at least one and now a days we have seen more than one interpretation of each one of them. The concept or moral of the story is usually kept as it's usually the core of the plot; the characters, depending on their importance vary in looks and slight behaviour but it usually swings around the same concept.
This is a bast topic to tackle, but if they where copyrighted there's no doubt that the authors of every fairytale would be filthy rich.

Examples below are the stories of Rapunzel and Snow White; both simple, yet with small variations it has been taken in diferent adaptations, from animation, film, teathre, dance, illustrations, photography and probably many other medias just with the only purpose of delivering the core message of their own personal stories. It's fascinating to know how attractive and versitile simple stories can become even after hundreds of years of its creation.

Rapunzel 

 

Snow White

 

 

Modular Game design

When planning how to approach this decision of making the starting village in such a short time, I had to look up into modular design.
I came across a blog by Joel Burgess in Gamasutra.com that covers the modular approach to Level Desing using open games like Skyrim and Fallout 3.
I pretty much invite people interested in game design to have a read at it and also to the article written back in November 2002 by Lee Perry (then Epic, now BitMonster) called 'Modular Level and Component Design' as pretty much it covers the whole process behind the time saving method of tilling props for the creation of a game environment.
Clearly the ideal way would be to make every single part unique to give a more realistic feeling to the world, but in a real working flow in the game industry, time constrains are always against game designers pushing us towards working in modular ways.
The creation of the props or kits of props comes easy to make once you understand the process of planning; the use of grids and scales becomes your best friend.
Before I even had the time of panicking of the amount of work I still had to do, even when using a repetition method I was glad they talked about the amount of team work that it's involve in the process and that usually this process is spread between the modellers  level designers and the art team; this only to spot any mistakes and make this props as reusable and efficient as possible, specially in open world games.

This is an examples of a kit used for a dungeon in Skyrim ready to  go to the 'Build-out' phase. 

For my own project the number of props is reduced to a slighly embarassing number as the time it would take me to texture them all would be more than what I already have, but at least I managed to get and experience of working under this modular concept. When I started working on the modular production of the houses I couldnt help to get this flashback of basic architectural planning that I learned years ago, and it turns out that once you understand the basic function and the way of avoiding it looking to 'square' the rest of the workflow seems to run a lot faster.

This is the type of concept I had originally for the style of the village. Looking messy, unsymmetrical and full of detail. With the time constrain, I was fearing of this being overly ambitious, and even though it was to an extend, I hope I managed to break down the key aspects of it and portrait them into my modular assets.

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 

Young Justice - still watching cartoons

I started watching the Young Justice in Cartoon Network not long ago (don't judge please) and I found it quite entertaining. I assume that it was an adaptation of a series in specific (as there is one comic that shares the same name) but it turns out that it's a completely new entry/adaptation of the entire DC comics universe. This took me by surprise as now a days every single comic and superhero is being turned into a film with few variations.

In this case what caught my attention was the fact that after finishing the first series and starting to watch the second one, I found some odd changes that weren't explained. Small details that I didn't thought where mayor and that expected to get them as a flash back later on during the story, but while searching for it I came across to an answer on the Siliconera website. "Young Justice Action RPG to serve as "season 1.5" of the story" is the title and pretty much it talks about a game that will come out on this September 2013 that will serve as a link and explain the 5 year gap between the two series.
With all this transmedia topic going on I think that adaptations it's the easiest way to get one story in different platforms, but I enjoy seeing this expansion in storylines that make this transition more efficient from one platform to another.
I'm genuinely tempted to play the game just for the sake of getting the whole plot, despite that the series has been cancelled.

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... 

Responsive brief

Following the video game idea for the previous module, where I ended up doing a bit of a cinematic, for this transmedia responsive brief I decided to expand into this story and transform it into something more than a side scrolling game.

From what the story goes, I'm planning to expand the idea of exploration and object collecting so that it can work in different levels of gaming, from social gaming like mobile and social-media games (facebook like), to platform, to massive multiplayer online (MMO).

I started to have the idea of either getting rid of the character's personality or make a customizable hero so that the user could identify themselves and input their own character into it, but I'm not sure how I could fit that with the story and the style.

Other games and concept art that inspired the style that I'm aiming at are Level 5 coming Youkai Watch and Bastion from Supergiant Games.

Something that I'm trying to aim for is heavily inspired on the type of textures used for the animation 'The Backwater Gospel' part of the animation workshop. Despite the art style being really dark and 

Vivus - Cinematic

As my response for the Context of Practice I decided to do an intro for the game project that I'm currently working on. My essay was focusing on the topic around meaningful games; positive games that encourage people to do good deeds and that can be considered as works of art due to their emotional influence to the user.

Among the concepts we worked on for the game, the idea of having an exploration game with no villans or 'bad guys' was key to our inspiration in the art work and concepts. We wanted to come up with fantastic scenarios where the player would have to explore and learn on it's own.
The main character is Harold (provisional name) and he is an apprentice of doctor. While traveling he decides to take a detour and take a walk in the woods. While taking a walk around underneath the a legendary floating island (where many legends are formed around) he finds an unconscious girl laying in the floor. He tries to help her but he's unable to determine how. He carries her trying to find some help and he finds a cabin in the middle of the woods. An old lady lives there but she doesn't speak the same language. While, this lady takes care of the beautiful and mysterious girl, Harold decides to help her and go around the woods and find a cure for her disease.

Now the idea for this game shifted from being a whole village with different illness and having time gauges of each villagers indicating how much living time they had. At this point we were working with a programmer that told us it could be an ambitious idea for the time we had to develop.
Even when the plot became simpler, the idea and the mistery behind the girl's background still persist.
The title 'Vivus' comes from the latin word for life and it represents the point we want to focus on; encouraging the appreciation of life.

The cinematic was really difficult to finished. I had a massive storyboard and nearly no time to work on that many images. Probably it was the problem that I worked in a detailed way in some parts that I probably shouldn't have (Plus I quite struggle with the essay itself).
Here's the end result of the cinematic, at least you can get a gesture of the kind of artwork that I was aiming for :

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.

Invasion - VFX Final

So it's done!
This is the final submission project for my VFX module. It has a few things I'll work on it: colour correction, some effects that created some odd squiggle, and simple mate choke for that white rim.
The animation might not be great but I'm quite pleased with the end result.
Please comment :)

I'm also aware that the sound is just...not good, but I'm hopeless when it comes to sound design... I'm sorry 

VS the World

Other than getting films that try to achieve real life like VFX, I wanted to mention how much I loved Scott Pilgrim VS the World.
As an adaptation of the comic by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim became straight away one of my favorite films for integrating all the silliness of a comic and yet making it look EPIC!.

Double negative was the studio behind this, and from making things like Skyfall, a project that has invisible VFX, Scott Pilgrim is a project that had to have this effects purposely visible.
It integrates videogame like effects that are actually acting in integration with the story.

This video is one of the fight scenes that has everything you can ask for: Music, particle monsters, waves, irony and action. Love it ♥
Check their website for more information.

Animating spaceship

Having the deadline upon me and having retarded issues with my health sure managed to get me quite behind on my schedule for the project.
As I mentioned before, the concept of my spaceship is an eye; the idea of a massive eye comming from the sky, looking at everyone and judging sure gets me the creeps, and this idea came from a while ago when I saw some pictures of the Helix Nebula also known as 'the eye of god'. Also my flatmate started watching a series called Fullmetal Alchemist and at some point towards the ending a creature summons god and he is represented as an eye behind a door of giant dimensions.

 

Now for the animation I wanted quick movements that will give a sign of desperation but also the idea of it scanning everything at an extreme speed.
I want sure of the textures when I thought of it; I had a concept of an abstract spaceship that would only resemble an eye, but at the same time hard to understand its purpose. I abandoned every spaceship concept I saw as inspiration as I wanted to make it something organic, so doors, windows and any ship-like feature was straight away ignored.

There is not shape more organic than a circle, so luckily most of the animation took place by rotating over a central pivot point, and by groping certain objects it became really easy to control individual spins and other movements.
Also to cause the effect of a pupil dilating I had to involve some scaling which gave the spaceship a bit of part on the silent narrative behind the shot; you can tell that it's looking around and also when it finds its target.

Hopefully the textures can be rebalanced in after effects to avoid looking so dump. Ill have to play a lot with transparencies and glow effects to achieve a decent effect.

Animating the alien

Having no time to keep working on the rig, I had to move on to the stage of animating the character to get things done on time. The rig had a lot of limitations and the weight　paint wasn't great either, but at least I knew what the limitations were so that I could work around them and get the best result as possible.

Having the idea of the character behaving like a lifeless entity became quite complicated and having the hair dynamics slowing down my laptop it was a matter of get rid of that idea as well. I opted for at least trying to get a sexy/innocent movement. Typing this on tumblr brought up loads of gifs looping walking cycles which makes it really easy to study.

TEAM WORK!

Preparing for filming was not an idea that was inspiring me; I could see everything being messy, lack of organisation and it taking hours to actually get to started on the filming.
I was surprised to see everyone participating and how things went faster than expected; people actually took responsibilities and stook to them making it quite handy.
I volunteered to be an extra, but I tried to help as much as I could in other stuff.

Later on it came helpful when a smaller group of us had to set the green screen, lights and cameras for the personal filming session. It requires a lot of work and planning; later on you regret not setting things properly when keying out.
I usually have bad experiences working with large groups of people where only a couple actually get the stuff done, but I'm glad this was an exception.

 The actual stars of everything!