This year is going to be weird, obviously. I was looking forward to GAD for some time, and was excited with the idea of making small games with a number of friends. Sadly, things have changed since then, and I'm not 100% sure how class will operate this year. The most glaring challenge for this year seems to be with game engines, which require certain hardware in order to run. I do look forward to using the Unity engine, which has been a topic of discussion for some time. While I don't have any worries about running it, I do worry about if everyone else can do the same, since some people don't have easy access to technology. And then there is the problem of doing it all at home, which can be quite isolating compared to the warm atmosphere of the classroom (both literally and figuratively due to the broken ac). I'm going to miss having to do this all in the classroom, and having to manage all of this at home will be a challenge. My bad habit of being a procrastinator will probably be my downfall if I keep it up. Regardless, I'm happy to begin learning about Unity and it's many features, and I hope to use it even further outside of class. I'm still gonna miss everyone though.
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Welp, the end of summer is fast approaching, and I'd like to take a quick look back at various things I did over the break to keep my skills sharp. One of the most notable being that I joined Art Fight, an annual event that involves drawing other peoples OC's for points. I was almost completely inactive for the first half of the event, mostly because I spent it looking down on my art style. But it's proven to be quite fun as I begin to participate more. I don't plan to turn this whole art thing into a career, but keep it as more of a hobby. Either way, I would still like my art to be good. I do hope to keep drawing on a regular basis, but that could change as school starts back up. And it will be weird to no longer go to my art based school, which was a good source of inspiration. Hopefully my motivation stays intact despite the change. Drawing is fun, and fun is very hard to come by these days. The last thing I want to happen is for drawing to no longer be fun.
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 my summer break may be coming to a close, I honestly look forward to the possibilities the next level of Digital Design has to offer. But the next year will also be especially crazy, as this class is even more challenging than the one I just finished. So to commemorate the beginning of this new era, I made a thank you piece to my first year. I felt that this needed to be in pixel art, as all I will be doing for the next year is 3D Modeling, which is both great and horrible, I also plan to make other metals to follow up with this one, hopefully each one will be better than the last. I know that this path will be stressful and challenging, but is all worth it for what I get to create, which is what I love to do. I'm excited for the new pieces of software I will be introduced to, eventually. And hopefully, I can live up to the expectations my cousin has set, (Not all of them good, not sorry Ryan). Well, I better prepare, and if all goes according to plan, you'll be graced with my presence for another two years Mr. B.
I tend to make very strange pieces of "art", especially if it's for work outside of class. My next creation was made using Photopea editor, which I find quite easy to use. I this call this piece, "Uhhhhhhh". This work had a chaotic process, but ended with me using tools I don't normally touch. It was originally just going to be the dolphin, but I also managed to add a few more bits in the picture, almost like easter eggs. I find Photopea easy to use due to how incredibly similar it is to Photoshop, but it's slightly limited in certain categories. One of which being the use of the Quick Selection tool, which drives me nuts, since I really like that tool. As you can see, parts of the dolphin look pixelated and sloppy, as the selection tool is not as accurate as the Photoshop counterpart. It still functions perfectly fine, but it's much more of a hassle to use. And while I may not have used it in this specific piece, the use of paintbrush colors on Photopea are also limited to only 10 swatches, but you can still manually choose a specific hue on the color wheel, which makes up for it. Due to the limits of the software, I ended up trying to add more parts to the picture, hoping to draw attention away from the bad parts. The process with the family of Loch-Ness Monsters in the back went much more smoothly. I had to use the magnetic lasso tool to select the original picture, since the quick selection tool was refusing to cooperate. But after duplicating the image a few times, I also used the clone stamp to add a slight shading effect to the neck, which worked out very well. The hidden piece of the image is the "Goose God" in the corner, which was very straight forward to make. 1: Cut out every part of the image except for the head and neck, 2: Make its eyes a gaping hole, 3: Lower the opacity, 4: Marvel at your masterpiece. This work was put off to the side for awhile since I was busy, but honestly, this is beautiful.
After a little bit of time to myself, I'm back to making digital works for my upcoming class. My first piece is also my first try at pixel art, so I went for something simple. Making a little sprite of the main character I created in my first summer assignment. Which was to create a few assets for a game. While this may not look like much, I did try to explore multiple techniques, such as shading, which I have never been good at. I also purposely went for a small and simple look to him, as he is not a very developed character, I'm still not 100% on a name either. I personally enjoyed working on it, and found it quite easy to figure out, now I see why people are so into this stuff. For my very first time using this kind of software, I'm quite proud of it, even though it comes nowhere near the standards of other pixel art pieces. I also took inspiration from other video game styles as well, such as how the head sticks "ahead" (I'm not sorry), of the rest of his body. The process I went through wasn't too complicated, since what I was making wasn't too complicated, but I may end up making a more detailed version of this in the future, until then, this is what I have.
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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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