Conference Day

Most people thought it would be cool to skip conference day, way over half didn't show, I'd like to be able to laugh at them and explain what a great day they missed but I couldn't say that without lying just a little.

I actually did find it really helpful and it seemed like a lot of important information was chucked at us, most of which I wouldn't of wanted to miss out on especially if I was one of the other half and regularly missed classes.

It did lack a sense of regime, basically we had to pick 1 of 3 sessions every hour or so until the end of the day; the reason I wouldn't give a five out of five rating is for the set up alone, I'm not saying I would of wanted to go to all 12 sessions, making the day 4 times longer or planning to have a week of these similar sessions but just a better was of showing each session on a list, it became clear that some were obviously practical, some with written work and some with just talks, therefore a better timetable could of made sessions easier to pick. I found that every single session sounded pretty much exactly the same as the last on paper.

First things we did were write out key words related to game art, then analysed a chosen picture as a group, it felt like it was a session to relax us all and build up our communication skills with one another also forcing us to mingle with people we might not know as well on the course.

This is a prime example of one of the slightly more tedious sessions, hand-outs and writing. Great.

I complain yet I did actually hang onto the notes, they helped me to do SOME work over the Easter break.

Short list of my uncompleted pieces of work and a small pie chart of how I spend my hours each day realistically, work might even be a smaller chunk than that :S

Overall I'm not going to say that it was a day wasted as I already explained I did enjoy and learn some things relating to work due I just think the execution of the day could of been handled better. 

Personal Inquiry - Second Draft

I still want to talk about gaming in my early childhood but instead of talking about the games I used to play as a whole I've now decided to talk about what made me fall in love with them so much. Glitches, Faults, Easter Eggs, I love anything and everything to do with them, I feel like they add a whole new spin to what ever you're playing.
The reason their actually known as Easter eggs is because it was a Russian tradition to give these beautifully designed eggs covered in expensive jewels and filled with wonderful surprises, Carl Fabergé's eggs now sell for millions and the idea has been passed though history in addition to the western tradition of egg hunting during Easter. These two traditions of Egg hunting and beautiful surprises together formed the concept of Easter Eggs within games.

You'd often come across such things because of how the game works, the way your character jumps/runs/dies/falls, there's almost always a way to get outside the map on most games pre-2010 but game developers regrettably have to fix these bugs because most consumers find them irritating; I find them quite the opposite, it's always a great laugh when you have the upper-hand over your opponents because of a cheat that only you seem to know and at the end of the day everyone ends up finding out how to do it anyway so it levels the playing field.

Obviously there are other people like me who love finding what game developers leave in for the fans which is one of the reasons why the Portal series was so popular. Finding one of the Rat Mans den's for the first time was just delightful, starting the game you know virtually nothing, other than you're a prisoner trapped in a lab, forced to trial various harmful experiments, then as if by complete accident you have the chance to stumble across this small room on the other side of the bleak grey walls. Writing everywhere, most of which is quite repetitive to show the insanity of your predecessor but all of it leaves you asking more questions, almost none of which are answered in game.
Cleverly leaving this information out of the game allowed Valve to sell multiple side stories and products piecing together the Rat Mans real identity which goes to show that there is a clear market for unlocking secrets, one in which some company's take liberty's, not revealing anything until you buy all the available Downloadable Content. Bringing me back full circle to why I love Easter eggs and glitches so much, it's something that's totally free within your already made purchase that makes everything 10% more exciting with each new find.

Referencing:
http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question112383.html
http://www.gamesradar.com/portal-2-easter-egg-guide-30-secrets-and-references-you-may-have-missed/

Low Poly Art - Research + My Try

These were just a few of the images that I found to inspired me to have a muck around with the style myself.

 

This was my attempt at this new low poly art style I had researched. I had a lot of fun and i even learnt how to turn assets into usable brushes so I can very quickly replicate any single object, literally painting them into a scene.

Homework - Coloured Poses

Water colours, Acrylics and oil pastels were used for this 1 hour study on using different ranges of colours that have a high contrast.

Various Sketches - Black Paper + 3 Coloured Pastels - Joe

Colour Theory - Pastels, Silhouettes and Water colours

PhoneBooth - Then and Now

 Not bad for only 6 months practice and to be fair, I entered the course with zero prior knowledge on how to create 3D assests and zero experience on any 3D modeling program.

Feet Studies - Homework

Personal Inquiry - First draft

For my Personal Inquiry I want to talk about gaming when I was much younger, how it has effected me today and how it will mold my future.
I've always been a heavy Nintendo fan, heavy being a pretty key word during my childhood (I was a proper Fat Boy), I was always one to get home, strip off and jump into my PJ's and start playing video games, it probably didn't help that I only lived one road away from my school so lets just say I had absolutely Zero exercise as a child.

One of my earliest memories was unwrapping an old kitchen set, looking at my mum and being like: YAAY, KITCHEN STUFF!! Then finding out it was a SEGA Mega drive with a bunch of games on the inside, (My mother still to this day wraps up tricks just to disappoint me, my favorite being the game boy game hidden in a TV box, I was sure I had got nothing that year till I kept digging) sonic was by far the one I played the most, never actually getting any further than the 4th or 5th stage was my specialty, SEGA quickly died as soon as I discovered Mario 64 at my Dad's house.

My step brother Ryan was about 9 and I was 6 and one of the first games I played was 'Wave Race' it was basically just a jet ski racer and for some reason we was both agreed that the only girl character was slightly faster than all the others, Ryan let me nickname her so being the lemon that I am I chose to call her 'Lovely', a stupid name that makes no sense but I was only 6, he didn't have many games so now I think about it i'm not sure why it took so long to show me the wonders of Mario 64 sooner, maybe he was trying to get 100% on wave race or something dumb like that.

Mario's 3D landscape blew my tiny mind hole, I proceeded to learn every little trick to each level, all the teleport locations, the best place to launch from the canons, all the secret stars and the easiest ways to find all the coins (Red and Gold). You could say I was obsessed.

As soon as my mum would let me buy my own games console I rushed down to cash converters and bought a Nintendo 64 for as cheap as I could, I made sure to by the one that came with Wave Race and some of the other games Ryan used to have, purely for nostalgia reasons.
At this point I should quickly let you know that I didn't used to see my dad a lot when I was young because of my parents separating which meant I didn't see Ryan either, I tried to get my mum to buy his old Nintendo, to no such luck he got more money for it at the local cash converters. This is were it gets real interesting.
I get home, plug everything in, and guess who's staring back at me on her ridiculous pink Jet Ski. It was Lovely, the copy of Wave Race I got was Ryan's, I hadn't seen him in years (Still haven't, he's like nearly 25 now) and I was now so happy to be able to keep a piece of him.

I loved my brother and it was him that made me love gaming. Without him I wouldn't of been so attached to playing the lesser known games and trying new things.

Life Drawing - 3min Proportion Sketches x13 - Seated Final - Zilla

Life Drawing - Sketches x22 - Finals x3 - Joe

Interesting Character - Development + Final

The brief set by Chris was for an interesting character, the only requirement was that it was 'Humanoid', never at ANY point did he say it had to be 'Human' so I don't care for the amount of stick I've been getting for not completing the brief properly. I did!!

I called him Erwin.

You know, because he's a Crocodile. Steve Erwin was the Crocodile hunter, he got eaten by a Crocodile... wait, no he didn't, a sting ray killed him.

Maybe I should call him Ray instead.

Pen & Ink - 144 Sketches - 12 Finals

This was certainly the hardest project I've had to do as of yet. Considering each week a new visual design project was set, usually to complete 12 preliminary sketches and a final piece, this one however mixed things up a bit. We did have an extra week than normal but literally 12x the amount of work was set. 144 Sketches + 12 final pieces were to be handed in.

    Remember the 6 P's

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[Finals]

I will be honest, I did start to lose interest by the 11th and 12th picture leaving them til very last minute meaning I had to rush them and the quality wasn't to a good enough standard.

Never having used pen and ink before so primarily I have undoubtedly developed my skills within this medium.