City of Heroes

Alex tries to kickstart his modelling career

In other news....

I made a 3D graphic for one of my website designer mates. Check out the rotating Z at the top of this page. Uh huh, that was me. Pretty happy with it, and it gave me good experience of working on something that didn't really have a final outcome planned out from the start.


I wonder if saying 'Hey I designed your website banner logo' will get me in for free?

Goodbye Bede Hall

Well, I am currently at home as I'm typing this post, although I'm heading back to uni tomorrow so I can go to the GameCity meeting. I just thought as I started this year's blog with antics of me living in halls, it would be fitting to post something about moving out.
Halls has been a positive experience for me on the whole. I got on with pretty much everyone in my flat, which I know is a pretty rare thing. I aim to keep in contact with several of my flatmates next year and continue our girlie nights out. Dancing to cheesy music and drinking strange alcoholic cocktails made of whatever was on offer from Nat's, does it get any better?
However, life was not all sunshine and roses. Things I will not miss:

• The guys downstairs with their infernal music travelling up through the floor
• The constant stench of weed throughout D block
• The hall manager who hates all of humanity, with special wrath saved up for students
• People rolling in at 2 in the morning screaming/ singing 'Oggy oggy oggy, oi oi oi' in the courtyard
• Fire alarms at 3am
• The piles of bins in the kitchen (which actually spawned maggots at one point, thanks everyone!)
• Becki with her cooking that splashes everywhere, thieving of cheese graters to grind weed, and screeching arguments with her boyfriend at midnight - complete with slamming doors and sobbing in the toilets. When asked to be quiet the response was 'I'M HAVING AN ARGUMENT!'

So I'm glad that chapter of life is closed and next year I will be in a house. With 3 guys. Everyone has told me I'm crazy and to be honest I don't doubt it. Alex is already threatening to limit my time in the bathroom. He shall be pranked, and pranked severely.

Everything I cook is orange.

I discovered this when I decided to defrost something I'd previously cooked from the freezer. Only problem was, I - in all my infinite wisdom - had not labelled it.
"Well," I thought. "It's orange, so it must be spaghetti sauce or bean chilli." Easy.
Six hours later and said object is defrosted. And is in fact chicken tikka. Good job I like chicken tikka.

I had a sitdown and a think about these events and I came to the conclusion that EVERYTHING I cook is in fact orange. Or at least turns orange when you freeze it. I shall dazzle you with a list:

Bean chilli
Chicken tikka
Spaghetti bolognese sauce
Bacon pasta sauce
Chicken fajita mix
Sweet and sour anything
Sausages in barbeque sauce

The one exception to this rule was when i tried to make a stew of my own invention and it froze grey. Which is really not a very appetising colour, and just goes to show that I should not try to be creative in the kitchen ever.

What is it? Nobody knows.

OK, I felt I should blog about something, simply because I haven't done so in over a week.
I achieved some, but not all of my holiday objectives. I did work at playschemes and earnt myself some cash by playing in glue and dealing with children on a sugar high. I also went round London a lot and returned to some of my favourite places. Canary Wharf, the Natural History museum and Covent Garden.
I didn't quite make it to Turkey. The flight costs went up too much so we went on a day trip to France and Belgium instead. It was lots of fun and I returned with crateloads of cheap alcohol. All the bottles are currently lined up on top of my shelves like an identity parade.
Welcome to sunny Belgium!

It's nice to be back, it seems like I've been here weeks I've already done so much. Night out at Liquid sporting a top hat, surprise birthday party for Alex round Caz's (a big surprise as it was 3 weeks after his actual birthday), lots and lots of Lord of the Rings and two house viewings. Phew!
And I have actually done some work. I should really get over to the library and try to scan all my sketchbooks in, but I might give up and just take photos.

Being ill is really quite pants.

I have grossly swollen tonsils which makes swallowing food and drink very painful, achy ears which has also thrown off my balance, achy joints, a raging headache and when it gets towards evening time I go very hot and cold and need 2 blankets and a jumper.
Needless to say I'm not particularly thrilled about the situation. It's always my luck that I fall ill at the start of a weekend so it's impossible for me to get to a doctor's and get any medicine, so I've had to make do with homeopathic remedies which one of my mum's friends does. To be honest, I'm not sure if I even believe it works but I have no better options right now.
I was warned that it might make me feel worse before it makes me feel better, but this morning I have woken up feeling just the same, although the headache seems to have got a bit worse. Fantastic.
Mum's friend is making me another remedy at the moment but I'm not sure if I want to take it. The other one didn't exactly do any good, who's to say this one will?

It's not like anyone I know even has a nasty cold thing! Where has this come from!? I seem to have a magical ability to pick up slight traces of an illness and magnify it, causing myself misery. I managed to do it last year by catching shingles, although having read that article it seems it just comes from dormant chicken pox. Surprisingly, that doesn't make me feel much better.

So, what's going down in Louiseworld?

Right this second I am listening to all my utterly terrible cheese music that I found on all my CDs at home. You know the ones. You buy them when you're about twelve and S Club 7 ARE the best thing ever. You discover them a few years later, feel disgusted with yourself and bury them under a pile of Basement Jaxx and Artful Dodger (or bands of choice). Then you rediscover them a few more years later and accept that yes dammit, S Club 7 WERE the best thing ever and rip them all to your PC.
I don't care what you all say about it, I am going to be happy in my little pop bubble.

So, what's been happening? Well, I dragged Alex, Tim and my friend Chris to the Tate with the plan of hurling ourselves down the slides, but it didn't really happen because of the queues. So we went round the Tate and chilled out in the park in Canary Wharf instead. I may also be furthering the 'London Ducks' series of photos. Yes it's now a series.

I have also been working at playschemes, where I get paid to eat chips and make mess. Well, it's not quite like that. I also have to help manage a load of kids, endure a lot of humiliation from doing stupid dances and get sat on by small children at high speed. Small kids are boney.

I am also practically exploding with delight at the sight of this marvelous trailer. Yes it's the new Ratchet and Clank, Tools of Destruction. It looks like Insomniac is having a true return to form. No more generic dark and grungy FPS, no more stupid arena combat, trying too hard to be badass Ratchet and Clank. A fun, brightly coloured, humour-filled, lovingly crafted Ratchet and Clank.It has crazy enemies, it has grindrails, it has boss fights, it has Ratchet's poofy tail. What more do I need? I cannot wait for this. The only problem will be finding a PS3 to play it on. I don't even want one, I just want to borrow one so I can play this game.

Well, I'm home again now. Been up to London today and eaten sushi, yum! I am definitely planning on going on the slides at the Tate modern before this holiday is done.

We also had assessments Tuesday and Wednesday which went very well for me. I got an A- for the van which I am very pleased with, and if I fix the errors I identified with it (namely the shape of the bumper and the amount of polys on the roof) then I could make it an A.

The art assessment was interesting for me to say the least. I was really happy that all the tutors were so positive about my work, and it's really inspired me to crack on and keep doing crazy stuff like embossing and ink blowing and stuffing things in packets full of hair gel. I'm happy that I got some positive reaction from people in the class who didn't even realise that we could do stuff like that, and I hope that a lot more people do go and just have a play with different materials. The worst thing that can happen is that it goes wrong and even then you've learnt something.

In a way, I'm also pretty happy I got some negative reactions. People don't see the point, people think I'll get laughed at, but I don't really mind. It shows that I'm doing something different, and (to quote Cool Runnings) "People are always afraid of what's different." I also got defended by all four tutors, which was pretty cool.

I think the crowning glory for me was Mr P's comment (paraphrased)." I told you all to do a blog task about the definition of creativity. This is creativity. "
I think it's possibly the most huge compliment I've ever recieved about my work. Let's hope I can keep this up.

The Final Blog task

I came to this course from an illustration focused art foundation, which turned out to be nothing like I was expecting. I was expecting to be taught different skills in different media to help me establish what I wanted to do in my art based future. Before about year 12 I wasn't even sure I wanted to do art. Art was just something that happened in my spare time and in art classes. It was part of me, but not necessarily who I was. As I specialised further and further in my school career, dropping things for GCSE, dropping things for A level, I began to realise that I couldn't just let art go.

I'd had the idea of drawing concept art for games for quite a while, I think since Ratchet and Clank 1 where one of the secrets you could unlock was the concept art for the game. I was inspired and the idea lodged in the back of my head along with my other vague plan - illustrating books.

So I moved on to the art foundation, where I was given vague ideas and comments. 'Produce a final piece on the idea of a votive object.' 'Draw without drawing' 'This is wrong but we will not tell you why'. When we came back after the Christmas break and were told we had better be damned confident in ourselves if we were going to be illustrators because we would have to sell ourselves every second of every day I broke down. I knew I couldn't do it. Couldn't compete with the egos and strange dress sense and overwhelming confidence in something I didn't even understand.

So I explained to my Mum what had happened and I bunked the next day and spent the entire time trawling UCAS searching for my two ambitions: Game Design and Book Illustration. I hadn't even realised you could do Game Art as a degree! I'd been planning on trying to get my foot in the door after finishing an illustration degree. I phoned round for some open days and suddenly life seemed a lot better.
As you can guess, I had an open day and interview at DMU and got on the course.


So why did I write all that? I don't think I've forgotten since I've been here that I have battled through a course that I truly didn't enjoy, and where I didn't learn what I wanted. Here I have felt settled and like I belong on the course, something I never felt on my foundation. I've also learned a lot, and it was stuff I was expecting and hoping to learn. So basically I am grateful for what I have here, which is something to keep in mind when reading my whiny complaints!

So do I have any suggestions for next year? Well I felt that the first project really flung us in at the deep end. While it did make us learn quickly, it was also pretty stressful. I know that Joel did his best with so many people who had no idea what they were doing, but I think we could have done with more one on one help. So for the sake of the next first years, I'm going to suggest a buddy system. Teaching other people how to do things that we already know how to do will ease the stress on Joel, help the first years feel more accepted and also re-enforce what we know.
Also having PCs that don't die every few minutes would be wonderful. We were all so impressed with their shiny newness at the start of the year but now you're lucky if half of them will run Max.
Other than that I feel like the 3DS Max stuff has been going well. I've really enjoyed making the street furniture and trees because you can see how it's directly relevant and ready for a game environment. There have been grumbles that it isn't interesting enough but we have to be able to walk before we can run. Group work should be interesting for next year, and maybe for after Easter if people still want to model animals from the zoo.

As I said before I've been really enjoying the drawing module. I surprised myself at the tutorial with just how much I've done. 3 full sketchbooks, one A5 sketchbook from the zoo and a big fat texture book. As well as a hand, wire man, chimney and arcade cabinets.
The formal drawing lessons have been really useful and not something that I've really had before. I had picked up various rules and tricks but the perspective stuff really helped. Shame we didn't get round to colour theory. That would be nice for next year.
I'd love for there to be more focus on the hand made 3D stuff next year, I've felt like it's been really beneficial. More time with Chris in classes would also be really good. I know he wants to be a full time tutor and I think it'd be really useful for us to have his direct input on our 3DS Max work.
I'd love if we could have our own studio space where we could work. I'm running out of space for all my 3D junk and my room is littered with the results of my artistic experiments.

The blogs have become a lot more fun for me, and I think I'll do my best to keep them up. God knows what Mr P thinks of all my days/ nights out but I like posting about them. It's a fun way to communicate with everyone and it's far better than essays would be. It would be nice if the blog tasks would link more closely with the lectures we have but I know that's not always possible because people are unpredictable.

The lectures have been really interesting and have provoked a lot of discussion. I think the inclusive gaming was probably the most hard hitting one for me because it made me analyse my own habits and preferences and examine what they're affected by.

I think I'd like to comment on the amount of notice we get for some stuff. In my experience Art departments are always slightly shaky on the organisation front. Deadlines and criteria changing, sudden field trips, unexpected tutorials, and timetable mess ups have all been annoying simply because they are all so preventable. Notices on the VLE would solve most of it.

Finally, the VLE itself. Could be a very useful tool but people just don't really check it now apart from for briefs and project deadlines. At the start of the year it had a bustling forum which has now sadly stagnated. Perhaps having a link to a separate Vbulletin messageboard or similar might be better?

Wow, the final blog task is pretty hard.

I've had a pretty cool week this week, Tim's been down, we've all finally viewed a house, played drunken guitar hero, saw 300, had a smoothie from the nice milkshake place in town and eaten chinese food. It seems far too early for the term to be over.

Plans for easter:


Catch up with all my friends from home.
Dress up like a pirate and go boating on a lake with my friends. Did this last year and it was brilliant.
Work for playschemes. It's basically a day camp for kids during the holidays. We do stuff like ourdoor sports, art and craft, drama, whatever. It makes you never want to have kids. EVER. Ah but the money is good.
Go round London lots and lots. Enjoy the extortionate prices, stupid tourists and tube bogies.
Go to Turkey. Oh god I need a holiday this will be sooooo nice if it happens.
Maybe some work will fit in there somewhere.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if your life took another direction? If at some point in your life you made a decision that changed how you are today? This may sound like it's going to become all philosophical and deep, but it really isn't. It's just an excuse to post pictures of me dressed as a chav.
For those of you who don't know what I look like or need reminding here is a photo of me and Tim, who for some reason looks like a ska musician:

And here is a photo of our bizarro universe chav counterparts. We were actually very scared of one another for a while that night, especially when Tim decided to name himself Darren, or 'Daz' and continually ask people 'if they were startin'?!' .Someone actually told us that we were so convincing that if they saw us in the street they would cross the road. High praise indeed.
So in conclusion I'm glad I'm not a chav.

All Hail the Zoo!

I went to the zoo today along with Caz, Alex, Nikki, James and Joel. Getting there and back was quite an effort as we had to get a train to Nuneaton and then a bus which only came once an hour and took an hour to wind its way through the countryside to the zoo. But it was definitely worth it. We got the bus fare and zoo ticket together for just £6.50 which was a nice surprise, and we all took tons of photos and did loads of drawing.
Quote of the day:
Alex: 'I only eat solid waste.'

The whole idea of this is to model loads of fun animals and make a first person mauler, where they all run around slicing/ goring/ trampling each other to pieces. Should be fun!

Week 22: Games Design Conference

I had free rein on this one so I just decided to look around the site until I found something that sparked my interest. This lecture looks really interesting, about knowing your target demographic and knowing who plays games. It seems similar to the lecture we had about inclusive gaming, if you make a game more inclusive, it will appeal to more people and therefore have more potential sales. This part in the description especially interested me:
"Analyze This! - Players Live On Stage" a live player study on the Wii provides insights into players' minds.

It's incredible when you think about it how many different ways people will come up with to play the same game. This is especially apparent in multiplayer versus modes, where different tactics will have different advantages. When we play Lord of the Rings in the lab, we all seem to have settled in to our chosen races. If there is a choice, I am usually Goblins, Tom the Elves, Sophia the Men, Alex the Dwarves and Darsh Mordor.
I prefer the Goblins because I can make lots of mountain giants, big rock throwers, and then spam cheap basic units to act as a meat shield for them. But why do I like to play like this? I could easily go a different route, but yet I don't. Why do I play the way I do?

What kind of factors most affect how we play games? Is it to do with our personalities? How we solve problems in real life situations? How we've played games before? I'm not offering any answers because I can't go to the lecture but it's interesting to think about.

Another slight tangent I went on from the lecture description was here. Facts and statistics about computer games and who buys and plays them. The pie charts for the best selling genres really surprised me. Action and sports games had the highest percentages for console games and strategy and children's games for PC games. If you'd asked me what I thought sold most I probably would have said shooters and maybe racing. But is that because I'm currently in an environment where those genres are more popular? Lots of people play CoD and Gears of War in the lab and any adverts on TV tend to be more shooter and racing game orientated, although I have seen some for Final Fantasty XII and Wario Ware.

Let's draw retarded Pokemon

So I did.
Ah how I love somethingawful.com :)

Week 21: Where do you want to go and how do you want to get there?

OK, so it's time to reflect on the course so far and then think about what I want from it in the future. Let's break it down into modules for what I've done so far.

Drawing: I would say drawing is my strongest area. I do work hard at it, but I also really enjoy being able to just play and know that it's helping me get somewhere. I've ventured into photoshop for colouring things which I was hesitant to do before. My media usage has become a lot wider because I'm not hampered by project deadlines like I was in art college.
Hopefully in the future I'll go more into the sculpture and plastics side of things and try making some 3D characters. I think it'd help me a lot and show potential employers that I'm pretty versatile.

3D Studio Max: I've found Max pretty tricky to get to grips with, but I am learning something with every project we do. I get a little worried sometimes because it doesn't come as easily to me as it does to others in the class and because I'm not as enthusiastic about it as I could be. I think I'm afraid that I'm not good enough when really I've been progressing a lot and have a lot to show for the past year.
I think my personal confidence is what's holding me back in this module, so I need to sit down and do some tutorials on the K drive as well as some from my 3D Studio Max Bible. Quite looking forward to the group projects to see how well co-operation and management works out, as they will be important skills for the future.

Art Style Guide: I'm going to lump the schedules and specifications in here too, as it's all document management. Although a bit tedious I can see the need for these documents in the industry. I don't feel like I've had a proper crack at the specifications having seen a second year example, but I'm going to try and do them in an instructional style for the van and resubmission of the tree. Timetables I feel have gone well and I have stuck to reasonably.
Obviously there will be a lot more focus on this area next year and I feel I do need a few more goes at it before I can really say whether I know what I'm doing or not, but I don't think I have any specific problems so far.

Blogs: Some of the blog topics I have loved, some of them I have found confusing and/or hard to write about. I don't think I have trouble with the blogs, but I wouldn't say I excel at them either. I like the way that I've started using it as a more social and fun thing by posting whatever pops into my head and by adding the blog to my facebook. It makes it easier to write in.

So there we go. I'd say I'm doing pretty well, although I need to give myself a kick up the bum with regards to using Max more. Now for the future:

When I leave here I want to have a strong set of valuable skills appropriate for the games industry. I'm currently really happy that if I keep working hard in all aspects of the course that I can achieve this. I'm happy on the course and feel like I know what is expected of me and that there are achievable goals I can work towards. The only thing I would say I want from the course is more focus on 3D sculpture in the drawing classes as I feel that this could help broaden my portfolio and provide more research for the Max work. But Chris has already mentioned all this so hopefully it will be in the pipeline for next year.

I went to see Hot Fuzz at the weekend!

Truly cinema cannot get any better than Simon Pegg drop kicking an old woman.

Brilliant film with some great references to Shaun of the Dead. Everyone go see it now!

Week 20: Creativity

What is creativity? Creativity is the ability to think of new and different ideas that are also useful and applicable to something. For me creativity always seems to manifest itself at about 2 in the morning when I am trying to go to sleep. My mind wanders as I fall asleep and stumbles on things that I always need to get drawn pretty immediately or I forget them.

Creativity is all around us. Every man made object we see was designed or planned by somebody at some point. It's easy to forget about.

I don't think creativity is necessarily hindered by technical constraints, it just helps to shape it. In the sound lecture Pip mentioned that it was a pity in a way that games now had a more wide ranging musical voice as they had lost the identity the music had in the NES era. Limits can force you to a conclusion you might not have otherwise reached, and doesn't always mean the work has to suffer.

I think everybody in a game 'does' creativity, although some may be more limited in how they can express it. A good portion of creativity for the game has already been done in the design document and it's up to artists and programmers to interpret their individual briefs as creatively as they can while staying within its boundaries and making sure it achieves what it needs to.

As an artist I'd think that most of my creative exploration would take place before drawing or modelling anything. I've been having a lot of fun in the plastics lab and print room lately so perhaps I might have a play with ideas in different media before properly beginning a project. In drawing I could use different types of media to convey an idea or be creative with the ideas themselves. At the moment I'm pretty fond of mashing together two different project ideas like hands and bits of heated up foil and seeing what comes out.

What does creativity look like? This is such a tricky question because as I said earlier absolutely anything produced involves creativity. However the quality and breadth of creativity is a varied thing. Creativity can be housed in a brand identity as it encompasses the setting, characters and art style of a game. It can also be found in the art style, programming and the gameplay.

I really like the creativity found in the Sly Cooper series by Sucker Punch. The characters are anthropomorphic animals, using the idea of familiar attributes that can be easily related to by a wide audience. Animal characters are often found in fairy tales or fables. The idea of playing as a thief is also creative and makes a change from the fairly standard fighter character.
Creative programming can be found in FarCry, where enemies use military tactics to surround the player and try to kill them.
For creative graphics and visual style I would give the example of Psychonauts. Wacky character designs with definite shapes and also a very lateral way of representing abstract concepts (actual baggage for emotional baggage and small men screaming "NO!" at you to destroy errant thoughts) make this a very unique game to play.
Finally for gameplay I would give the example of Guitar hero. Being creative in taking the idea of rhythm games and the secret dream of just about everyone to be a rock star, and combining them to make a great game. Games which come with their own standard control system like Eyetoy or Donkey Konga always seem that little bit more novel.

I feel like some of my posts lately have been slightly controversial and have made people disagree with me. Which is fine really, a debate is a good thing to have. But to counteract this argumentative tone, I have decided to post pictures of kittens!


Awwwww

Week 19: Life changing or career building?

This week's task is a pretty tough one to get info on. The main questions is whether games companies want fresh arts graduates with open minds who can be taught things or whether they want graduates who have taken games orientated courses and have learnt modelling, texturing, animating or concept drawing skills.

I've searched through the jobs postings on gamasutra and all of the arts ones are asking for experience in max and photoshop, as you would expect, but they do also want traditional art skills.

I found a pretty good interview on gamasutra with Doug Tennapel, the creator of Earthworm Jim.
Tennapel says he likes everything Insomniac does, as well as the game Psychonauts which I am inclined to agree with. I liked the way Psychonauts was pushing the exaggeration of the characters, but I did feel that this meant that some looked like they were in a different style to others. Some of the campsite kids have a wildly different look to other ones, but on the whole the designs are brave and work well.

One of the main messages from the interview was that videogames companies need to be hiring artists who have more of a broad art background with experience in skills like colour theory and anatomy. He claims that instead many are being blinded by the details that artists can achieve

"Like for instance, if a guy maybe renders with his pencil really well, puts good shading on a creature, but his anatomy is completely wrong…they hire him because he tricked them with his cool detail, even though the foundation of his drawing is weak."

It's good to see that a message like this is coming from someone within the industry, asking for all round applicable art skills. I feel that the balance between art and modelling is a delicate one, and one that this course handles well. The art skills we get taught by Chris in the drawing module are applicable to all types of art. Perspective, colour theory and anatomy are universal skills which perhaps are not as prevalent in the games industry as they should be.

But perhaps neither is original and creative thinking, which would be more likely to come from art course graduates. My art foundation certainly taught me how to think outside the box and redefine words like 'drawing'. A drawing is not pencil lines on a piece of paper, it is any type of information about anything presented in any kind of way. So if I were studying oranges for example then yes I might do a traditional drawing but I might try cutting it up and printing with it, rolling it in paint and then on paper, casting it, trying to replicate its colour, warping its shape, measuring it and writing down its stats, rolling it and recording how it moves or smashing it on a canvas.

All these are legitimate drawing techniques, which I don't think some people on this course really understand, perhaps because they weren't expecting to have to address them. It would explain the slighty underwhelmed response to the exhibition the other week, which was full of interesting abstract work.

So I've basically come the long way round to saying I think this course has it right. The industry is asking for specific skills like 3D Studio Max and Photoshop which we can deliver but hopefully with some prodding we can deliver a more broad understanding of artistic techniques and skills which can help expand the horizons of the games industry as well as providing the more immediate benefit of accuracy and understanding.

I have a new hobby. It's called papercraft.















Expect to see my print budget disappear very rapidly