Hey hey everyone! It's check-in time. This is going to be a very brief check-in seeing as my activities last week were more or less the same as the week before it, and most likely will be this week as well. The biggest difference seen this week was resolving creative differences between different team members, which I hope to see less of moving forward, considering the little time we have to polish everything to a certain degree. I at least have to count myself lucky that such issues have been minimal up until now but let's at least hope to keep it that way. Regardless, the plan remains the same for me, and I am now more confident that we can put something together that is worthy of submission. The hard part of that plan is making sure it goes over well with the rest of the class, seeing as turning in an unpolished product can be seen as a bit unsatisfactory. But this is senior year after all. Plan for the week... Monday: Team check/brief Tuesday/Wednesday: Animation work Thursday: Speaking with 3D modeler and programmer for scene construction Friday: Departing tasks for team
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Here we are again with the daily check-in, featuring your friendly-neighborhood team lead! This week in particular served as a continuation of last week, with the creation of a few more sprites and the process of implementing them directly into the Unity engine. This not only provided a few more assets for the final product but helped begin the process of a full team transfer onto a shared file, which will be my focus for this week as well. I also feel that this week was a little slower in comparison, at least in terms of making individual assets. The reason this is the case, however, is because I spent an extra amount of time helping my teammates with various issues, as well as spending more time as the team lead rather than the 2D artists, which is going to happen every once in a while. Regardless, I believe that I am making good progress in both areas. The plan for this week is as follows: Monday: Move entire team onto shared Unity file Tuesday: Continue animation and imports into Unity engine Wednesday: Further animation work Thursday: Implementation of animated sprites with respective player and enemy scripts Friday: Addition of whiteboxing for 3D environment.
This, my friends, will be the first of many updates that I will post as part of our development process for our final team game. The production of Zenith will require a clear timeline and detailed path as to where the project will head. As of right now, I have started with simple animations to remind myself of the process, as well as knock out a number of essential enemy types early. My creation of a number of idle animations is a clear and simple example of my role as the resident 2D artist and animator, and the addition of these animations will aid my teammates as the overall world is flushed out and brought to life. Overall, I ran into very few problems, which is good in this particular aspect of the team project. That does not mean that this will not be a long and arduous process, as these are only a few of the many animations that I will have to move forward with making. I believe that the relative speed that I made these animations with is a very good sign, meaning that I can pump these out without too much risk of falling behind. That and my ability to do them in this manner after a long hiatus from animation fills me with a newfound level of confidence. My future plans are now to focus on the animations custom to the main character, mainly so the programmers can then move in to programming him in to make the gameplay functional to a degree, which then allows for the development of the rest of the game.
Anyway, it's time I got back to it.
As is a common trend throughout this entire year, I've had to make a ton of plans to make sure I don't get swamped by everything on my to-do list at once. But outside of this work calendar is a rough plan of various things to do on my own, like hobbies or ways to improve my art. Part of this plan is to eventually pick up animation, which is something that has been on the list for a very long time. I've always been fascinated by animation as a whole, but have never found time to engage in it's very long learning process. Refining my art in a number of ways has always been a focus of mine, and has also been a bit hard to maintain due to school. I do hope that spring break is the time I've needed to get into these topics, and begin teaching myself how to animate, because I've put it off for far too long. School has really been pressing me for time these past few months, all the while I have a number of personal responsibilities continuing to grow, which leaves me very little time to do my own things, and pursue the hobbies I started at the beginning of the year. The end of the school year is also rapidly approaching, meaning that both my senior year and the inevitable aspect of college are rapidly approaching. So my time to develop meaningful skills before I start higher education is all the more important. Developing these skills is extremely important to me, because it could contribute to whatever it is I ultimately decide to do in the future. And being unprepared is the last thing I want to happen.
It is art time In the past couple of months, I've been doing some art things, for better and for worse. I've decided that human portraits should be my main concern for a bit, just to get the hang of facial features and poses. But I'm also trying to add a bit of style at the same time, I can't exactly say it's 100% effective yet, but I'll get there. I've made some good and bad things through this method, and I hope that it'll help me reach a point where I'm not disappointed with everything I make. I hope
Now that school is officially over, I can now "relax" and continue to stress about the deteriorating state of the world and how I fit into it. But at least I'm keeping my sanity by focusing on a bunch of hobbies, and working on improving my art. The main change I have made is that now I am doing a good amount of my drawing in Photoshop, trying to take advantage of the license that students have on the software for the time being. And I have to say, it's working a lot better, with the addition of pressure control and an overall increase in features, Photoshop has out-preformed the pieces of software I've used in the past. With things like pressure sensitivity and a larger number of special brushes, the options have become much more diverse. And everything is much easier now, which is a great in a time where hobbies are a great way to keep my sanity. I look forward to how this will effect things in the future, especially for Game Art Design next year.
While still uncovering the secrets of the drawing tablet and my main paint program, Krita, I've begun to piece together my own design. I really enjoy drawing little mini-me's in strange positions, and that's what I have been doing for the most part. These characters of pure chaos are quite fun to make, and I'm mostly reflecting my own personality into their image. While I feel that I'm closing in on my own style, I still need to experiment with other important aspects of digital sketching, shading mostly, which I tried to work with as much as possible in the picture above. Despite my love for the simple and crazy drawings I do, one thing on my agenda is to test making more realistic and serious full body characters. I hope to develop my art style into something a little more complicated in the coming months, meaning that certain pieces will take a little longer to make. But as I tackle this problem of uncertainty, there's one thing I know for sure. This is super fun
One of the highlights of my Christmas was a Wacom Intuos drawing tablet, which will make certain tasks so much easier in the future. While this version does not have a screen, it's much better than having to use a mouse. The lack of a screen will prove to be a challenge in certain categories, such as accuracy. As I have to constantly look at the computer and guess where my hand is on the tablet. On the other side, the pros are much more influential. The pen strokes are very smooth, which is what I was looking for, as it is incredibly hard to draw even a single straight line with a mouse. I've done a little bit of testing already, but I only decided to keep a few, as the majority of them were pure messes. This tablet may take some getting use to, but I know it will be an essential tool for many works to come.
I've been quite active in the use of pixel art, mostly for portfolio work. But in the process, I found it to be quite interesting, as it is something I've wanted to work with for awhile. And its quite enjoyable to work with as well. While I may have no idea what I'm doing, that means that I'm doing this all without prior knowledge. And I also did this without practice before hand, (or maybe this is my practice?) And that's....something, but that doesn't mean that I won't continue to get better at it. And I plan to experiment with this type of art style, such as testing a new type of design for each image. I plan that by doing this, I can post this type of art more often. And once I believe a have a good understanding of this, I'll move on to try another art style. But in the time that I am working on this, I find it quite fun, as it dosent have to be too complicated. But still requires enough detail to be appealing. It allows me to make up for what I lack in hand-drawing skills. So I'll try to make the best art I can, but before that... I'm gonna make some weird stuff
My class is continuing the use of Illustrator, slowly getting into more complex assignments and creations. And if I'm being honest, it has many pros and cons compared to Photoshop. One being that it is much easier to create more complex shapes, with multiple tools centering around that exact function. The picture above is from my most recent assignment using Illustrator. This assignment in specific uses multiple tools for even the smallest parts. One of them being the notorious pen tool, the tool that requires plenty of practice and has caused so much frustration in this piece of software. Once you know how to use it though, it's a very useful tool for creating more unique shapes, which is how I created the toppings to the burger. Another one of the most frequent tools in this assignment is the mesh tool, allowing the user to incorporate a certain color into a part of the image, giving it a 3D appearance. I especially enjoy using the mesh tool, even though it may take some time to get the coloring right, it creates a very breathtaking image once you've done it correctly. The entire software of Illustrator is extremely useful for creating logos or simple artwork while you're the pre-production stage of a project. But to create more elaborate or thought out images in this format, you have to know what tools to use and how to use them.
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AuthorI have a passion for creating things, and hopefully one day those things will be video games. You can check over on this blog if you wish to see any updates on my work or other subjects. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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