Robot Love

Hey,

For those that have been following I haven't really posted up much work lately to show you people what im actually doing with my life. That is about to change at least today.

I have been very busy working at UR, or rather Flix Interactive (http://www.flixinteractive.com/) after the company was closed down and reformed under a new name. I have however been very active working away, designing, building and testing all of our up and coming IP's as well as helping with the concept development of all our current contract work. With the company also having moved location its been a great new change for all those involved in our team and a exciting one too.

As I mentioned earlier in my post I was going to give you guys a update as to what I am doing with my own work now and here it pretty much is. It is a concept I begun to build as a side project to what im doing at Flix. Doing my jeep side project I realized the importance of really push your boundaries with each project to try and learn as much as you can about technicality of building and refining in different styles. Most of my work has been very rustic so I think its about time to shake things up and start doing some nice sci fi to start bolstering my portfolio and show how flexible I can be with my work. I like to share with the community that follow my blog what im doing and how im going about it as I struggled with a lot of things when I began in 3D and its good to see other people's work flow.

This is a design I drew up after working with UR and began doing my own designs in my spare time. 'The Spire' had a robot incorporated that really inspired this design. I wanted to put my own twist on things to give  the robot a real organic feel as well as keep the silhouette in something a person could relate to. I think its good practice for a 3d artist to be able to convey their art work in lots of ways especially in drawing. Drawing is a great tool for cracking out ideas in a preliminary stage and figuring out in your own mind how to create things in 3D that will have functionality. Many new 3d artist fall into the trap where they lack the skills to draw or intentionally skip this essential step. Its good practice to get into a life drawing class or doodle at most opportunities you have. It's all good practice in the end.

Having done some drawings and selected a design style I took this straight into Max to start fleshing out the basic design. I normally go through lots of trial and error at this stage to get the right direction for my work. The greatest thing about computers at this stage is definitely the undo Ctrl+Z =D. I normally make tons of decisions that I like to change and change again so if your doing work keep in mind that blocking out doesn't need to be perfect at first.

After a bit more blocking out and decision making I look at the over all shape in 3d to see how the silhouette is shaping up. In designing for games its important to remember about the silhouette as this is what the player will relate to when a enemy is approaching. It helps the player determine the threat and also their strategy. As a designer in any respect this will help in developing your designs too. I can see at this point the shape is slender and long but I will end up having to put more defined features such as spikes fins to increase its flying silhouette.

This is as much as I have so far so I will post up more soon as I have more to share with you. I hope you liked the post and feel free to leave feed back, suggestions or ideas in the comments segment under this post.

Thanks