Wednesday 28 January 2009

Playground work in progress

Well this was fun. Still got loads to do. It's part of the playground in the park that's next to my accommodation halls. I'm going to add more to it, like bins and paths and another bigger play area next to it.












Oh yeah, haven't done the chains on the swings yet because I'll be using alpha maps for those.

My rendering thing in Max has screwed up for some reason... after I added an Omni light, it just showed up as pitch-black after I press F9, but I can still see my objects fine in the viewports. How odd.... I'll take it to the labs sometime and see if that will happen there.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I managed to save a picture just before the render problem came:


Just testing out the lighting and shadows! Heh looks like night-time...

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Week 15 - Games Industry

As we are all aware, we are currently experiencing an economic recession, meaning that many industries are changing. In recent years, games have been an extremely fast-increasing source of entertainment that is catching up with the films industry. It is still going strong but anything can happen in this world, and it too can be shaken by this recession.

Jobs are getting increasingly hard to find. From what I’ve heard, 16 game companies in the UK have closed down. That is an incredibly scary thought. Competition in the game industry is strong, but not only that, the sales of games are currently suffering as well. There is a problem with credit which is unavailable in Eastern European countries and scarce and in the Middle East, so transporting gaming products is becoming a difficulty. In the USA, retailers are choosing only the best games to order. Trading is one of the major concerns.

At the moment, all I’m can do is to work hard, be efficient, push boundaries and wait for this bleak period to lift. Sounds simple, but what else is there to do? No point in sitting around and sulk, at least make good use of my time while I’m in First Year and get something DONE!

EDIT: Hey... if the economy recovers two years later when we graduate, does that mean we'll be competing with the previous graduates who didn't manage to get jobs? That's triple the competition?

Monday 26 January 2009

Quick Dynasty Warriors fanart

I reeeaaaallyyyyyyy needed to get this out of my system so I did a quick speedpaint of my favourite Dynasty Warriors characters Zhang Liao and Xiahou Dun in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" style outfits. I had to make up Zhang Liao's hair because he always wears a large helmet which covers up most of his head in the game lol.

To be honest, I started off drawing emo angsty Xiahou Dun in a dark dark room wearing a modern day shirt hanging open and looking out of the window while smoking a cigar......... but it ended up being like this instead XDDD.

Lol Xiahou Dun's arms are totally messed up...



















Oh, and happy Chinese New Year :D

Monday 19 January 2009

1 hour speedpaint

1 hour speedpaint. Dress could be improved >_<.


















Reference here.

Huh.... why's the background gone all stripy? o_O

Sunday 18 January 2009

Finished 3D bike... (I think)

So! I followed Mike's advice, looked at Del's and Dan's layouts and made my own... I hope it's ok! I've also improved the bike a bit, added some brakes and gave it some simple textures.

Saturday 17 January 2009

Speedpaint

Roughly 1 hour speedpaint. I was talking to people on msn at the same time so I think I could've done a better job >_<. Clothes folds are hard when speedpainting.




















Reference photo from here.

Thursday 15 January 2009

3D bike

My 3D bike! This was very enjoyable. 3757 triangles.
















































Hmmn, I just realized that whoever rides that bike is going to die.......... because I forgot to add the brakes!!!! YIKES.

Wednesday 14 January 2009

Female portrait speedpaint

Nooooo time's up! I wanted to see how much I can paint in one hour:

3D handbag and some speedpaints

I modelled my new handbag. Yes, it really is that flowery.

























30 mins - 1 hour speedpaints:



































This took the longest but I really enjoyed it:














Friday 9 January 2009

Christmas Week - Creativity

What is creativity? Creativity is the property of putting original ideas into a medium. It is part of our everyday lives, sometimes used without realizing, other times it is specifically needed to complete a task. It is stimulated to produce ideas from our various interaction with our surroundings, to help us adapt in our ever changing world. We depend on our own creativity to generate and produce novel or a wider variety of ideas to affect our current situation, which may be causing us to feel uneasy or unsatisfied. We use creativity to make changes, improvements, solve problems and so on.





















Beautiful pencil art by Jennifer Maestre!!

I think that artistically, inspiration, experimenting and interaction with those around us are good boosts for creativity. Experimenting is a great way to exercise our creativity. It’s not good just throwing out your first ideas down onto paper and calling it the “final design” because it appears cool, but to tweak it with various methods and styles, share it with other people to get opinions and feedback, and basically to show the development work of your creative process.

Staying in the comfort zone is not a bad thing, but I would not stay there for too long. Like the frog in the well, it really limits your imagination. Go over your borderline every so often, discover and try out new things, you’ll never know what awesome things you can come up with if you just give these new things a try.

One of my favourite artists on DeviantART used to come up with some fantastic tattoo name designs everyday. He says he does it to exercise his creativity. He used to take requests from other uses on the e website and turns their names into beauty tattoo designs. I probably did not explain it very well, but if you click http://wen-m.deviantart.com/art/tattoos-No-7-47408419 you will see what I mean (I hope).

In conclusion, creativity is an important aspect of the human race. It allows us to view the world in a different perspective, to invent ways of improving. When I was younger I used to tease my dad about having a lack of imagination because he works as a scientist, however he turned to me and said, “You need creativity and a good imagination to do my work!”