Confidence in Art and Life

It's been a long, long time since I last updated, there's a reason for that.

Since last I posted I did some intern work for Wales Interactive and did some free work in my spare time for Irontown Interactive on their iPad game Iron. Both of these gave me experience and confidence in my work as well as some essential industry connections. Ultimately it helped land me my current job as Junior Environment Artist at Oysterworld!

I've been at Oysterworld for around about 9 months and it's been pretty great all round. I've been working on a number of unreleased projects and it's great to be part of an awesome team. It's also helped greatly in one other aspect and the subject of this post...

Confidence

Confidence has always had a strange place in my life, I've always struggled with it in almost every aspect of my life but at the same time it's never been overwhelmingly crippling. My art has always been a part that was particularly bad, never really producing anything I've been proud of for more than a day or so before resigning it to being awful. I know I'm not alone among artists in this respect, it's a hurdle every artist faces and one that many fall at, and I'm far from over it yet.

I have however, improved. It's partly down to having an industry job, where I can get real, honest, face to face feedback on my work. It also helps to see everyone else's work and your place in the chain. Sure, I'm not the best artist, far from it, but I'm a Junior, nobody expects perfection from me other than myself. I've come to see where I stand in the grand scheme of things and it's helped me be confident in what I do at the level I'm at and to seek to improve to rival the people around me.

There's also the personal side to things. I would say my confidence overall in life has seen an improvement. I've been through a lot of the last few months, I've had to face a lot of demons, some of which I didn't even realise were there, and I have many more to face in the near future. I went to the doctors about my anxiety and have been put on medication for that, which has been a life saver really, it's allowed me to 'come out of my shell' a little more, less terrified of every little thing in life. This helped reinforce the idea that I already knew, everything wont fall apart from that little thing you said the other day, that thing you almost did but decided against. No, actually things are better not worse. This has helped me no end in many aspects of my life, but within the context of this blog I think this carries over to the art I produce.

Confidence. Confidence in what I am doing, what I can do, what I should do. All of it is essential in art. Whether it's that one confident brush stroke or the belief that you CAN reach that level of detail if you take the time and think about it. Confidence and belief in yourself. It's not easy, it takes a lifetime of effort to achieve, but if you really want it, you will put in the effort.

I'm not saying all this from a position of complete confidence or self security. Not at all. I've just managed to take a peek over the wall to the other side and seen the light, I still have to climb over the wall to reap the benefits.

Christ that was wordy... and a little heavy...

Let's have some images to remedy that. I've finally got round to practising my Photoshop drawing/painting again, an area which fascinates me but one I consider to be a weak point of mine. To help learn some new techniques and ways of working I've been watching and attempting to replicate the art of Aaron Blaise. He's a personal favourite artist of mine and has some awesome videos on his channel. I took the video step by step, pausing every few seconds and trying to replicate that on my image. I found this much less intimidating than trying to outright copy it and it also offers an interesting insight into other artists workflows.

Anyway! Here they are:

Ultimately I think they are both massive improvements over previous work, and not half bad for someone who hasn't practised this kind of painting in a few months. One of the main things I can chalk it down to is... CONFIDENCE! And guess what, because they turned out well, it's given me more confidence! Time to ride the confidence wave while it lasts...

The Return Of Dean!

So I always said I wouldn't let it get this long between blog posts, but I guess I failed that one...

Work dropped off quite a bit since finishing uni, I took some nice well deserved breaks after finishing my showreel and applied for a few jobs. In the end nothing came back so I'm still searching while working an agency temp job on the side. Working 8+ hours a week 7 days a week for a while I wasn't in the mood to start any big projects but now I have a few days off I'm getting back into that working spirit.

But enough about my personal life, I don't have a whole lot to show but here area  few digital painting I did to practice new techniques.

The first image is my first real attempt at drawing anime, I've recently gotten into some Visual Novels (Katawa Shoujo and Fate/Stay Night) and absolutely loving them at the moment so it was only natural for me to want to give the art style a try.

The painting was a copy of a random image I found on google search:

The second image I have done was a more personal project, it is a copy of some of the official artwork for Final Fantasy X-2. I never really got into X-2 but FFX was one of my favourite games of all time and the character design for Rikku in X-2 is really nice, so I thought it would be a fun project.

I have done a few other small digital painting projects just to improve my technique but most of them are just quick sketches. My next project is a top secret game. I'm currently blocking it out and getting the practical side of it down, making sure the gameplay is reasonably solid so that I can tell how far I can take this. At the moment it is going much better than I expected and I may draft some other people on to the project if they're interested in joining, but I want to get the idea down more so I can give a proper pitch.

In short the game is a side scrolling shooter which uses 2D sprites generated from 3D models.

The ultimate goal of the game would be to get it released on the app store, just as a free downloadable thing that can be a laugh, it may not get that far, but that's the goal I'm currently aiming towards.

Busy Busy Busy....

Wow... almost two months since my last blog post, I used to be so good at keeping these up to date. I've been so busy that it has been slightly neglected so I imagine this blog post is going to be a biggy.

My last blog posted showed the end of my major project work at university, despite numerous difficulties the grade eventually came out as a 68, a high 2:1, which is what I wanted to get as this left me with a 2:1 overall for the year.

The last week I graduated, woo hoo! It was a pretty surreal experience, it feels like only yesterday that I believed I was never going to get into uni and here I am graduating with an upper second class honours. When I first got into uni I obviously wanted a first, but knew it would be difficult, my ultimate goal was to get a 2:1, so overall I'm pretty happy, and a high 2:1, although it doesn't show up on the grade, gives me a confidence boost in my work.

The hats are still stupid though...

Between finishing my major project and graduating I had the amazing experinece of doing a two week Erasmus program called Inform.Animation in Sardinia where students from universities around Europe worked together to produce an informative animation for a client. I had the pleasure of working with students from The University of Liverpool, Universidade Do Algarve in Portugal, Facolta Di Architettura Di Alghero in Italy and The Technological Education Institute of Athens in Greece. I met some truly amazing and inspiring people while I was there and it was a once in a lifetime experience. We had to generate a short informative video about the positive aspects of natural cork and highlight why wine buyers should by bottles of wine with natural cork to support in industry and protect endangered animals. The brief was from Portugal and we had constant feedback throughout the project so we knew exactly what the client wanted. My role within the team was to use After Effects to animate the drawings given to me by other members of the team.

So... where does this leave me now?

I'm currently getting my CV and showreel sorted out so that I can start applying for jobs as soon as possible. I'm getting really excited seeing all the jobs I can apply for, I expect it will be a while before any show interest but I might as well stick with the motivation while it's still here. I've also got a summer project planned with some of the other graduates from The University of Glamorgan, or University of South Wales as it's now known. This project is going to be a short movie although it is still very early on in it's infancy.

I'm also creating a mermaid designed by Jess to help me with female anatomy, as somehow I've managed to avoid female characters up until this point. I was a bit intimidated as I always find the more subtle forms of the female body harder to draw than the male body, but I'm pretty pleased with how this has turned out for only a few days work. This is still very much a WIP and the face and tail fins are still very undeveloped but it seems to be going fairly well so far.

After the mermaid is completed I intend to look further into scripting as it';s something I've touched on quite a bit but something I think could be worked on to help improve my work.

So, I have plenty to keep me busy, and fingers crossed I might get an interview or two sometime in the near future. Who knows what the future holds, but I have a feeling it's going to be good.

Final Renders

There are a few final renders coming out of my major project work now as I prefer the marking showreel for Friday. Not all of them are finish, some still need ambient occlusion and some have unfinished textures but this is where they are so far.

I have rendered them out as still frames to stop it from getting compressed twice and will not be putting them into a video until the showreel so I can only show still at the moment.

Here are the books:

The bow and arrow:

The Staff

Church ruins:

There are a few more props and the characters that still need to be finalised and rendered but it's coming along well so far, I've managed to pick up my work speed by spending as long in uni as possible so I should be all set to have my showreel rendered out by Friday, and then that's my 3rd year completed.

2 Weeks and Counting...

It's been a while since I last blog posted as I haven't had time to render or screen record any of the work recently. I will begin rendering turnarounds of some of the finished props tomorrow so it won't be left until the last moment. I cannot render them out on my laptop as it doesn't have the memory (cant wait to go home and use the new computer) so I have to wait until I'm in uni before I can do that, it is a similar case with texturing.

I can screen record the unity particles and how I have them linked up to the animation but it will have quite a low frame rate so I will be rendering them off also when I can get on a decent computer.

As for now I have a few renders:

I'll update with turnarounds over the next few days.

More Particles...More Props

Tomorrow... tomorrow is the first submittal deadline for the game, it allows the tutors to see where we are and give us feedback on the what we need to do for the remaining few weeks. I'm feeling fairly good with what I have done, but I feel like I should have a lot more done by now, I can never quite estimate how long everything takes.

For the submittal I have been getting everything up to an acceptable standard so the tutors can see where I am going with it, but it does mean much of the detail has been pushed to the side for the time being.

I have done a quick diffuse, specular and opacity for the Ice Bow:

I have also been getting some of the particle effects done for the game now that I have a much clearer view of where the project is heading. I have already made the staff particles as well as the magic attack so I moved on to some more important areas.

I made a quick snow particle emitter to make it snow, I intend to have the emitter follow the player character without inheriting it's rotation so the snow is always coming from the same direction. If I have it emit in world simulation it should also stop each individual particle from following the player when he moves.

Here is the effect so far:

I also made a snow footsteps particle so that when the Fae is running he kicks up a bit of snow. I want to add some more opacity to it so it is more like the Bark Basher attack later on but here it is right now:

I also made some particles to go along with the Bark Basher's push attack where he uses his large shields in a lunge and pushes the player back. The idea is it kicks up a large amount of snow as they're shoved across the ground:

There are quite a few other props that I've done turnarounds for which I'll upload in a bulk post after the first submittal.

Playtesting and Props

We had our first playtest of Echoes on Friday, after plenty of hard work getting it into a playable state. I am impressed with how well everyone did and couldn't be much happier with how it went. We managed to get a working game out , with a few bugs, and had more people than I expected turn up to play it. So overall it was a great success and we got some good feedback in the end, and found a few things we'd missed while playing.

As well as the game looking promising I have managed to get a few more props done, time is getting tight now but if I pull my finger out I'm sure I can do it.

Here is an updated of the church ruins:

Only basic textured on at the moment, I need to sort out some of the finer detail and scuff them up a bit, but it's a nice start. It only has a diffuse at the moment, and a quick opacity for the windows.

Here is the staff which I've just started to texture:

There's not much to say about this, the texture is pretty basic, I want to add a few more details to it but it should be a surprisingly quick one to texture. I'm quite pleased with how all the maps have come together to make the crystal.

End of Easter

The Easter holiday is over and it was great to see all my friends and family and have some time to chill out but it also feels good to be back in Cardiff and in the working mood again.

I have been working on some of the particle effects in Unity and although the particles systems in Unity are easy to use I think they can be quite limiting on what can be achieved, that said there are some really useful tools in there for achieving what you want.

So far I have a trail added to the Fae's weapon:

This has a trail component on it causing the main trail, this was originally intended to just be active during attacks to add a swiping effect to emphasise the attacks but thought it worked when it's always on. I'll bring this up at the next group meeting and see what people think. The other part of it is a particle effect attached to the top of the staff which simulates in world space, hence the fact the particles trail behind, which I think has a nice added effect.

I also made some particles for the magic attack. At the moment the idea is energy is sucked in as he jumps into the air, then as he hits the ground with the staff the energy is expelled and some rocks fly up in the air from the impact. Again this hasn't been checked over by the ground and needs work but it's a start.

I have also been working on the church ruins which are used as the level transition and a possible boss fight. So far I have modelled them and I am in the process of unwrapping them although I am running into quite a few problems.

Either way here it is:

We have a play-testing session this Friday to see how we're doing so far so that's exciting, hopefully it will go well without too many hiccups.

Easter Holiday Fun Time

So I'm back home for Easter and while I will still be working plenty, as I have plenty to do, I have had some time off to spend some time with the family and friends, so it's been a less than productive few days.

First off I did a few books, nice and quick, quite nice and relaxing. They were actually quite fun and I think they've turned out quite well so far, they still need a normal map and the specular map has only just been started but it seems to be working so far.

I begun texturing the instruments although they are in super early stages. It was more a test to see if I could get something that looked close to right, I probably shouldn't be showing this at all, it's embarrassing really.

Other than that I've started a few props but they're too early to be worth showing, I've also made a few minor tweaks to the centaur texture, but barely enough to be worth noting.

I've also been reading up on my anatomy some more and doing some pencil sketches, I'll probably upload them some time when I have time.

My graphics tablet has broken over the last week or so, and as such it's slowed my work down considerably, especially as it's mostly texturing and high poly sculpting I need to do. But it's not really an excuse for how little work I have gotten done, I guess it was lucky I took a week out over Easter in my schedule, so I should be fine still.

First Echoes Sweatbox

The first sweatbox,where we show our work off to the tutors and the rest of the course, is happening tomorrow so I've been getting some quick renders out so people can see my work.  So I thought I might as well post them on here.

I've been continuing to texture the characters, although this has been going slower than I would like as I'm having to work on it in university rather than at home as my poor computer cant handle the stress these days. But in terms of the actual texturing it seems to be going quite well.

The Centaur has a Diffuse and Specular map:

The Fae has a Diffuse and a Normal map:

Other than the characters I have the weapons, although these are not textured yet. 

And I have the instruments from the previous posts although I wont bother posting them all here again as they haven't changed.

I feel like I don't have much to show for saying how much work I have been doing, I am a week or two behind schedule due to personal matters but I think I need to step up my game a bit, especially as the final deadline draws ever closer.

Still the work I have so far exceeds my expectations so there's a bonus there, I just need to work on getting work done faster by improving my workflow.

Texturing Time

Texturing has begun! I always like to switch between texturing and modelling a lot within a project so I don't get too overwhelmed by one or the other. This is particularly true about texturing as I consider it one of my weaker areas. Unfortunately due to the urgency of much of my work I have had to get all of the modelling, unwrapping and high poly sculpting done early, leaving the mountain of texturing to climb.

I began by going to the Centaur. It had been a while since I had worked on him so it was nice to be reunited with him again. I began by blocking out the base colours, then adding some texture detail. I then went on to render the normal maps and ambient occlusion maps to help give it some of that high poly detail. This was a bigger problem than I had hoped and eventually took me around 3 days to get to work...shame on me...I have always had trouble rendering these maps out and always waste too much time on them. In the end I used xNormal, I program I had used a bit before but this was the first real use of it.

Anyway, here is the current centaur texture so far. It only has the diffuse map on at the moment and it isn't finished, I want to work on the colours so they compliment each other more as well as adding detail to areas I haven't had a chance to yet like the quiver.

I'm quite pleased with certain aspects of it so far, such as the skin, which I normally have trouble emulating on my models. The ice has come out reasonably well so far as well considering the small amount of time put into them so far. The AO map has also massively helped to sell this texturing and I'm looking forward to doing more high poly sculpts and adding ambient occlusion and normal maps to my future models.

There are areas I'm not so pleased with as well, such as the leather straps. I always seem to have some kind of leather on my models and have never been able to get it to look quite right, I may got back and redo the leather completely. The rune like marking on his skin are also more like place holders at the moment rather than final ones.

I have also begun the Fae's textures, although these are in a much earlier form than the Centaur. As it stands the Fae only has blocked out colours and and AO map applied, this is because I get the centaur one working and I decided to get the Fae's AO done quickly while it was fresh in my mind.

Absolutely nothing about the Fae is final, and there is some AO cleaning I have done which isn't in the screen capture but it gives a nice first feeling of what the Fae will be like. The AO worked surprisingly well on the areas that varied a lot from the low poly to the high poly, such as the forearm detail and the roots on the feet, and could almost pass without a normal map, at least as a static, unlit mesh anyway. 

The textures are looking promising so far and it's certainly boosted my texturing confidence. I seem to have started this project with quite a bit more knowledge and expertise than I had before, which is strange as I'm not sure where it has come from, most of the work produced between last years game and this one was quite poor, but I seem to have pulled it all together for this final project and it is going much better than I could have expected.

Low Poly Centaur

I believe the low poly of the centaur is finished, tomorrow I will hand it over to the riggers and animators to give it a once over to look for any final changes that might need making such as edge loops.

There will not be any more major changes to the design and the topology will remain largely the same, after this I will be unwrapping it and creating a high poly model.

The model currently sits at 7,413 polys which is within the 7500 limit set.

Here some pictures of it:

I've rework some of the topology and redid the hair to make it tidier. There are still some tris that need cleaning up where I have meshed some of the pieces together but other than that it should be complete.

Final Year Project Is A Go!

So, the time has finally come, the final year major project production has begun. I'm so glad to be out of pre-prod and into production, I thought pre-prod turned out okay but I much prefer production as that's where my passions lies.

So the beginning of the production is pretty hectic for me as I have to get two characters and some props in to riggers and animators so they can begin their work. We've timetabled it all in around each other and if things go to plan it should work out perfectly but it does mean I have less time to tweak if anything doesn't go to plan. Still I'm hopeful for this and I'll be working pretty hard on getting these done in time.

The first two things I need to make are the characters, the Fae and the Centaur, as they need to be rigged and sent to the animators as quickly as possible so we can get the animations in game. As the Fae's rigger will be rigging the dragon first I am making the Centaur to begin with so that can be rigged straight away. Then I can hand the Fae over as the dragon has finished being rigged.

So there's the plan. I have until the 28th January to get the centaur modelled and hopefully unwrapped before I pass is on to get rigged, if it is not unwrapped within that time I can quickly unwrap it before it gets skinned.

Here is where the Centaur is so far:

It's far from finished, the head especially needs work, but I have been trying out a new workflow where I switch between 3Ds Max and Mudbox constantly throughout the modelling. I used 3Ds Max to get the shape right as well as smaller details and topology work and then switch to Mudbox to get the forms right and sculpt in details. This method has proved very useful so far so I'll keep using it for now.

I'm going to be working with the riggers and animators closely and taking all their feedback on board especially when it comes up topology but I have spent quite a bit of time so far in trying to get nice flowing edge loops and making sure it will deform correctly.

Things seem to be doing well so far, any luck and we might have a half decent game by the end of it.

Turnarounds, turnarounds, turnarounds!

So pre-production is in full swing for next weeks deadline, I don't feel like I'm going to be able to get enough done for a great mark, but I can definitely produce enough to make production run smoothly. As well as this deadline I have a business studies deadline on Friday so I have to work on that too, so there's no shortage of work that's for sure. The business studies project doesn't have much to show yet, when my business card is finished I can put that up here, but I need to do some renders before then.

So for pre-production I have been working on the turnarounds for most of the characters and props as well as designing some of the props, it may seem late to be designing, but a lot of the props are very minor and don't require too much design, unlike the characters.

So I'm just going to post a load of turnarounds for you to look at, drawing is not my strong point but they seem accurate enough to be useful in production.

The Centaur's Ice Bow:

The 'Tholos Arch' building:

The Player Character's Staff

Ruin No 1:

Recorder Prop:

Violin Prop:

And the Centaur himself:

Quite a few things will be changed before the end, and some things will be changed when it gets to production as there won't be enough time to change them in pre-production now. But some things like making the instruments more unique and less like ordinary instruments, but for now I have something.

The ruins will also be split up into smaller parts, such as separate pieces of broken wall, rubble and floors, so they can be adjusted if gameplay requires it and also so they can be mixed and matched into different designs. This gives us some more freedom and also works as a safety net.

Christmas Pre-Production

Hope everyone has had a good Christmas and you're having a great new year.

So, with just over a week left of pre-production things should be a rush, and I do have plenty to do, but I think being at home means it hasn't quite hit me yet. Especially as the first hand in the business studies is in this week as well. I should be on top of everything though, I'm sure it will come together.

As the beginning of production is almost here my excitement is rising about the project and seeing everything come together from different members of the group is giving me a great sense of scale and seeing everyone putting so much effort into the project is making me feel like we could do what we've set out to do, maybe even more.

But on to some of the work I've been producing, some of it I'm quite pleased with, it's not great, but it's a weakness of mine so average works for me.

I began by doing a digital paining of the player character's head. It's a new style of painting for me, using a low opacity brush and building it up to darken it, creating lighter and darker spots. Nothing special, I quite liked it.

I did a quick Mudbox sculpt as I've met with some success using the different basic meshes to get my idea across. I'm still no expert at sculpting and I generally like to start with a 3DS Max model and sculpt in the form and detail, but to save time I just try to manipulate the mesh as best I can in Mudbox which is quick but I sometimes struggle to get across what I want.

I have a WIP of the Fae's turnaround, it has the proportion there so that other group members to can use it for their work, but this is top of my priority list atm, along with the centaur turnaround. I want to add a three quarter view to the turnaround if possible but it's not essential for it to be a working turnaround.

Finally for the Fae I have begun my maquette which acts as a final art piece for my character, this is still reasonably early in development with the shape and forms still being worked on, but it shouldn't take too long to finalise.

I also did a sculpt of the centaur by taking the basic human mesh from Mudbox and a downloaded horse model from the Mudbox store into 3DS Max, cutting them up a bit and then meshing them together before bringing them back into Mudbox to sculpt. I quite like this as I sculpted the muscles from memory as I have been doing a fair amount of anatomy research but having the basic proportions there from the initial basic models certainly helped no end.

I can use these sculpts to get a good feel for how the model will work in a 3D space as well as help me to get the proportions right when it comes to producing the turnaround and producing the final 3D model. As character proportion are what usually let me down (just look at my Thor character from earlier this year) these will be invaluable in ensuring that I produce a high quality work that will do the game proud. Well I hope that's the case anyway...

There's also the beginnings of a turnaround from the centaur here:

I have also begun the centaur maquette but as of now it is still only half covered in sculpting clay and the forms are far from complete, so watch out for the centaur maquette coming up soon.

Considering how much time I've taken off from Christmas and New Year to see family and friends I was concerned I hadn't done anywhere near enough work, but it seems that the time I was working was actually productive so I don't think I've fallen behind too much, I should have it under control and some hard work over this last week should secure it. So lets bring on production, I can't wait!