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

Show Homens Luzes - Wrecking Crew Orchestra from Eddie on Vimeo.

This was so cool I had to put this in a blog post

Late and Never. Undrawn Reality!

I seem to be writing my posts few and far between and I believe that my latest blog has been far overdue... so what have I been doing lately? For those that have been reading my sparsely spaced posts they would know I have been on a 8 week placement at Undrawn Reality to whom I can happily say now I am a 3D environment artist for. The company to be honest is in its infancy at the moment but has been very active over the last 6 months developing a very exciting title. I expect within the next 6 months we will finally be able to talk about it once it is announced. I have been very busy modelling up loads of placeholder models. When you get a job your productivity seems to shoot through the roof and all the information from others in the office seems to travel to your head by osmosis. I am definitely an infinity better artist from spending my time at Undrawn. Matt Clarke (http://clarky.carbonmade.com/) is one of the best artists that I have come to know. Being not much older than me with a ton more of 3D years under his belt (over a decade), he has really helped me to progress as a artist (So thanks if your reading this and I'm sure this will hit me in the butt for saying so!).

 

Working in a small indie studio definitely has some great potential. I can't imagine working in a large company would give me any responsibility with making decisions that would change the game dramatically. Small teams such as UR are great in that respect and I am really enjoying the freedom to express my opinions, ideas and even argue my points with the head honcho's of the company. All to which you get respected for rather than getting looked down upon. 

I can say that I feel pretty at home among all this creativeness and also that I still hate unwrapping... but hey you can't have it all =D. I have a few things that I am working on at the moment that I will be sharing pretty soon to get me on the swing of blogging again.

I have been playing a lot of games also in my spare time (yes my life consists of pretty much games in every respect atm) one of which has impressed me no end. The is the very big World of Tanks (http://worldoftanks.eu/ , http://worldoftanks.eu/media/show/328/) that has a impressive 20 million+ players. you start off with a simple tank and work your way up some serious tech trees so some hefty metal behemoths (Google the Maus tank). The game is cleverly designed and balanced to work with player characteristics and game play style. Even a nimble light tank can run circles around a heavy tank or tank destroyer if the player is good enough. As a free MMO game its got massive potential as the developing company Wargaming.net is getting ready to release a dog fighting plane counterpart, World of Warplanes (http://worldoftanks.eu/media/show/327/.The quality in these games is certainly there so I highly recommend downloading it for a good try.

I think that's all for now but check here regularly as we start ramping up the productivity at Undrawn Reality!

Work Experience.

I have finally started my work experience placement at Undrawn Reality (www.undrawnreality.com). I think I'm actually in love with this industry and where its going. Its good to know that my insuperable desire to work amongst creative practioners isn't going to kill me mentally. I cant post up anything im doing at the moment untill I have been given permission ( which is unlikely with a game currently in its development) however I can post up the tutorials I am using to learn the things needed to get up to standard.
I will try to keep you guys up to date with what's happening but this will be very limited due to a N.D.A.
Enjoy.

Ammo shortage!

For all the people following this blog they will have known I have been working on the outside area for the building I created a while ago. I have been working on the texture getting it to tile and its starting to take shape and im just feeling my way round the getting the characteristics in that I like. The whole struggle for jobs at the moment has been a real demoralizing time for me and I am sure others that have been forced into the unknown of unemployment at the current economic state. If work seems a bit slow that is more than likely why. It is however important however to keep optimistic and push through. I thought for the mean time I could work on producing some models at the end of my day for turbo squid to keep me financially going for the mean time. A hour or so at the end of the day to crack out some small models that are easy to model and texture to get a nice outcome. This will few extra props for my portfolio and also varying my workflow to keep me motivated. Heres a quick ammo crate that I have modeled in high poly and also a beginnings of a tree.

final jeep renders

Well after a few days of tweaking and adjusting I think I can proudly close the jeep project and add it to my portfolio. A few extra adjustments to textures and modifying the ambient occlusion bakes on the mesh lead to these images. Enjoy

Willy Jeep (pretty much finished.)...2

After playing around with the Ambient Occlusion and vertex colors I managed to crack out a few more test renders like this today.