Well its been a while

The titles kind of sums up the general gist of this post, i completely forgot about this over the (awesomely awesome) summer, but people keep reminding me about it and telling me to post something. Do people enjoy reading this more than i do writting it or something? - and i do quite like it, its rather fun..

So yeah, thats me into 2nd year and its been goooooood so far. Ill put a quick summary of my modules along with what i have planned for them, and probably the next few posts ill scan some sketches and so forth

Sound Effects and Psychoacoustics
What an awesome title, psychoacoustics, great word. Basically our task for the next 8 remaining weeks (eek...) is to come up with a sound library for a demo level of a game. The game description (i don't think it actually exists) is a bunch of English knights storming a French castle, on a quest to find a magic sword, set during the medeival period (if the first part didn't give it away). The demo level is set in a courtyard of the castle at dawn, when the statues of the castle come to life to fight the intruders. So theres a bit of the supernatural in there which will require some imaginative sound design. So right now my ideas mainly consist of loads of little things flying around my head of what sounds i can use for what and so forth. I'll need to write a list sometime soon.

Entertainment Design
Probably going to be my hardest module this semester as we're learning action-script, and so far i haven't been able to get anything working in it. I think ill do a bunch of tutorials soon though, to try and boost my confidence in it. On the upside however, our task was to come up with a fun and interactive game concept and I'm loving mine. Short Version: Seagulls shitting on peoples head. Long Version: The seagulls of the world, sick of the humans, have united forces under one leader, and declare war upon humankind. Squadrons of seagulls fly to every major city across the world, and prepare a bombing run. The player plays as a seagull, and has to aim and poo on peoples heads. Iv been thinking through some of the game mechanics lately and iv figured out how i would implement more difficult levels, a reward/punishment system etc. Im also still working out the artistic style i want. Im thinking of making it look old fashioned, perhaps an art deco kind of look, or perhaps a world war 2 film look to it, old fashioned and grainy. Perhaps a combo of the two, who knows? (I should, but oh well!)

3D Production Design
No coursework as of yet (Wooooo party time!! *grabs pinyata*) BUT we will be getting tested (Awwww *puts away pinyata*)on our knowledge of maya techniques of which we learn in tutorials. So pretty much were learning how to use maya, without the stress of also having to making something while your learning. So iv just been playing around on it, making little things, doing additional tutorials, etc etc

Life Drawing
Its that time of year again folks, grab your pencils and a sketchpad and go draw some people! - Thats what they should have done as the introduction, Its short and accurate. Drawing models in the studio, and drawing people outside the studio. Lots and lots of drawing people. I'm really getting into it actually, Im surprised at how full my sketchbook is currently, think iv filled 12 or so pages, a little over a quarter, thats like the amount i filled of one sketchbook the entire semester last year, if i keep this up i might have started a second one!

Sum-up

Well its been a while since my last proper entry here (not including that single image post for dynamic communications - i was just feeling lazy that time) So ill run through a quick summary of how my works been going the past few weeks.
The life drawing deadline came and went, my desire to do as many drawings as possible to add onto the minimum of 4, led me to a fairly sleep deprived, stressful, but overall satisfying result of 12 final drawings (with another 4 planned but lacking motivation on the last leg... ah well, life goes on)
Next up was some audio, i took an audio recorder out from the library and did what recordings i could at that time, and finished the rest at a later date. So i am now in possession of what i believe is everything i need to complete my audio coursework, and i've set myself a deadline of friday to do it (todays wednesday right? hmmm... i better not take too much longer on this thing in maya - ill get to that soon)
After the first batch of audio recordings and before the last, was dynamic communications. Me and George got together over the holidays and got to work on designing our "natural cathedral" (see previous post). It took us about 16 hours or so to finish, and we took pictures of the progress at intervals and plan on creating a small animation to show the evolution of our idea. That can be done quite quickly and easily so it can wait for now.
Finally, we get to maya. Oh maya, iv already had the rant about maya on here sometime earlier in the year so i wont bother again. I'll just say things havent changed. Iv been (and still am as i write this) stumped as to how to get further in the creation of one particular shape i designed for my environment: the top of the lookout/entrance tower. I seem to be full of ideas on how to most easily go about it, however each in turn decides to crash and burn and slowly douse the small flame of hope left in me. I stumbled upon a way to create a very similar shape to the one i desire, however i feel that if maya is going to be a major part of my life for the next few years (possibly much longer too) then "very similar" just isnt quite going to cut it. I want my shape. And i wont stop till i get it.
...Or until the deadline begins to encroach and i start thinking it best to have something rather than nothing, but lets not think of that shall we. Ill leave on a positive note - brought home all my in-class life drawing, yay!

Dynamic Communications

Some life drawing

Not been on here in a little while, iv been working away on everything mostly, and the past week or so iv dedicated to doing some more anatomy drawings for my life drawing module. So heres the extra that iv done so far (already did the minimum of 4 and uploaded them on here)Muscles of the Back

Muscles of the abdomen


Muscles of the Neck

Skull (my personal favourite)

Iv still got 4 drawings of the ribcage and spine at different angles i want to finish in my sketchbook before handing it in tomorrow. If i manage i should have a total of 10 pages with 16 detailed drawings, should be fine i reckon!

sleep sounds good

well its been a good wee while since i posted on here, my apologies as i was ill, and couldnt seem to muster the motivation to work. That is until yesterday when i remembered its crit week and essay deadline on friday! So i got cracking on some sketches, made a couple coffees and had a very productive all nighter. Managed 9 pages in my sketchbook. Most of it is 3D environment development, stuff that i had in my head, and transferred into maya, and kindof bypassed the sketching, but folk dont seem to like it if i dont show all my ideas nice and drawn out so i got to it.

These ones are for my audio coursework, theyre quick little maps of what my environment is going to sound like, and where each sound will come from, to give an idea of the distance i need to create

Then i went on to further details of my environment, the way that the sun effects the interior of the temple etc

And hes where iv left off in my actual maya work, doing the towers currently, then ill do the guardhouse, then its pretty much a choice between the mountains or the lower city buildings (copy and paste towers)



So iv got my pitch in just over 2 and a half hours, that should hopefully go fine with all the work iv done, then ill head over to the library to try and borrow a hand held recording device, as i plan to record most if not all my sounds by the end of the weekend. After library is a quick trip to the bank to sort some stuff out, then once i get home either sleep or essay... im probably going to bet on sleep

Mountains

Title basically sums it up, iv been playing around on mayas hypershader (looks really complicated but i think im starting to get a basic understanding of some parts, the rest still eludes me completely however) and managed to come up with quite a good way of creating a rocky texture using displacement shaders, bump mapping and fractals. Takes an AGE to render, but i think it looks pretty good on my very quickly sculpted simple "mountain shape". The real one will be alot more... er... mountainy. Yeah... so anyway breakfast time! mmmm porridge.

Fire, Water, Earth, Wind... Or maybe just the first 2 for now

And so Stuart looked down upon this world, and it was good. But things were a little dark. Let there be fire! He declared. And there was fire.

He then looked upon his illuminated world, and it was good. But soon the fire spread and was too much. Let there be water! Stuart declared. And there was water.

(And it was bloody hard to make water)

It even changes colour depending on the lighting i use and it refracts objects so they reflect to a degree. That should make for an interesting little resevoir inside my environment!

Back on track

Well, i finally fixed maya and things are back on the move! Which is all for the better as i was informed by sources that the deadline for the 3D environment and sketchbook is a actually about a MONTH earlier than i thought... so thats going to make life a little bit harder, but i reckon i can do it. Im still left with a little over a month to do it, so as long as i can finish my environment to a degree i deem acceptable within the next 2 weeks, i can spend 3 more just drawing like mad! Im unsure right now but my life drawing deadline might be the same date, so thats going to be interesting to see if i manage. But then the good news is if those dates are correct and i succeed in getting alot done, then all ill have left is... not much! just my audio and dynamic communications coursework. Dyna could be finished within a week of dedicated work with george, so long as we plan out our animation (should get some storyboards up). And audio, still need to get an idea for the ringtone, but the 3D environment sound should be a simple matter of field recording and mixing the sounds.

Sounds i want to record:
Horse hooves (coconuts)
rocks tumbling (simple enough)
wind (same as rocks)
medieval market (farmers market? with lots of other random sounds in there too)
clanking armour (pots and pans?)
dripping water in a cave (dripping tap with reverb?)
maybe a wee bit of faint acoustic music in the background (record friends)
whatever else i can think of that might be in my environment

As for the environment itself iv been working on the gatehouse today


Yet to decide on the final look of it, just playing around to see what looks good really, but i think the initial shape iv made there seems to fit quite nicely, just need to do add more curves and do the top

Sometimes...

Sometimes you just really have to hate maya. It will work perfectly fine most of the time, with the occasional little hiccup throwing you off beat for maybe an hour tops, or inconveniencing you ever so slightly. But every now and then it doesnt just throw a spanner in the works, its burns down the whole production line... Such is the case with this latest mystery: I cant select things. I have no idea why, i can select an object, but beyond that... selecting edges? nope. Selecting vertexes? nuh-uh. Faces? Dont kid yourself. Its brought me to a complete standstill... iv tried restarting the computer, restarting maya, opening previous saves, starting afresh, even giving up on the simple selecting, none of the other buttons work either. As far as i can see, it is literally impossible for me to continue. I lack the simplest yet most crucial thing for just about every program. Damn you maya, damn you.

The time for change is now!

titles a bit over dramatic for me to simply state that i decided to change something in my design but oh well the points across. Was just finishing the wall surrounding the city, but then something about it kept nagging at me. It just made it all look a bit too closed in, so im hoping that i can rectify that by expanding the walls further out. This left the problem of there being a large space between the bridge and the entrance at the wall, so iv decided to create some kind of gatehouse/citadel structure. Still in the conceptual stages as of yet, probably some form of tunnel (with gates for defensive purposes) and large buildings attached to the walls to house guards and whatnot. Would probably also be used for various other purposes such as food storage, temporary housing for travellers, general "governmental" offices (not too sure if this city has a "government" as such yet). But yeah, hopefully ill figure something out by tomorrow. Hoping to finish the entire exterior of my environment (minus the optional texturing, fluids and particle effects for fire, smoke, mist, etc) by the end of next week.

Oh by the way, started writing a blog about gigs and music if your interested, partly a journal of my musical encounters and partly an expression of my opinions about music and other affiliated things. It'll also remove the temptation for me to talk on this about awesome stuff that happens - lets try to keep it about uni shall we. http://gig-aholic.blogspot.com/

Sculpting a world, bit by bit

Another day, another blog update on my 3D environment.

Things are starting to take shape quite well, iv completed the main temple building (exterior) now, and added some torch stands on the bridge (ill need to research how to make fire in maya as well as water)




So tasks for the end of today: complete walls + finishing touches on the stairs (cant have folk falling off the edge now can we) then tomorrow i think ill take a little break to do some more research on my 2 architects for my essay ...or i might just do some more maya...

Updates updates

Well its that time again, been maya-ing all day now after a well deserved sleep (we'll get to that bit later) and have a few more images to show the progress of my 3D environment

The first thing iv been workng on is the main building on the plataeu, got the shape of the main section just as i want it and just have the entrance and towers to make. Towers should be a simple matter, entrance on the other hand will be a bit more challenging but ill think of a way


The other thing iv been working on is the stairs to the rest of the city, think theyve ended up looking good!



Iv been thinking a bit more about what im going to include in my design, and its basically just more logical thinking about how the place would function. And it came to me that the central building, having a gaping hole in the top, would inevitably be a good source of water collection, so there would be a resevoir underneath, and theoretically "plumbing" leading to every house. But what got me thinking was the fact that you would be able to see he rain when inside the main building, and this led me to realise the various ways in which the interior could be seen, depending on the weather and time of day, thus changing the mood all the time. So if i have time i reckon i would render images with different lighting environments and effects to simulate these. I just keep on giving myself more work dont I...

So im gonna keep doing a bit more tonight, but before i do that, ill just say the Mastodon gig in Glasgow was AWESOME last night, they played brilliantly, but even better was the fact i ran into them in a pub round the corner when i took a wrong turn! best mistake of my life! ended up walking the guitarist - Brent, to the gig because he'd had a few to drink, like always, good old brent. Had a nice wee conversation with him and got his autograph, and the entire time i couldnt believe it! Also have suspicions that the support act - totimoshi (or something similar)- were sitting behind me on my bus. There was 3 americans, one girl and 2 guys, on their way to the mastodon gig, and they were talking about how they would need to quickly do stuff before the gig. And the support act consisted of one girl and 2 guys, american, and they were quite late to the gig. Still, quite possibly a coincidence, but just imagine if it is true! thats one hell of a fateful journey!

Audio sounds AWESOME!

So a quick wee post here, got our audio coursework told to us today, need to make a ringtone for myself (not sure what ill do for that yet, but it has to be as imaginative/abstract as i can think of), and then the other task is to create a bit of audio which goes with our 3D environment, which sounds like a lot of fun! Already got the ideas in my head, planning on having a little walkthrough of the city - horses hooves going up mountain slope, wind, falling rocks etc - dismounts horse - walking on stone bridge, noises of bustling city below - eery silence entering temple - soft music begins to sound, as well as ambient cave sounds etc. Should be fun to do and itll help motivate me to actually finish it! On that note heres how far iv got so far before i go off to have some fun tonight! happy pancake day everyone!

Catching up

So here we are again, its been a little while what with working for pitch week, gigs and visits back home. So heres a little catch up on each of my modules and how im getting along. (basically everything i said at my pitch plus a bit more iv done since). First off, still dont have coursework for audio yet, but that might change in 5 hours when we go into uni for our lecture/tutorial, so news on that later. Then theres our life drawing module, which im really enjoying, as well as finding it challenging to try a different way of drawing from how i would normally. The images that are done differently from my normal style are tucked away at uni unfortunately so no pictures here, but i do have my anatomy sketches handy

Find it quite peaceful to draw anatomy, gonna try to do as much of it as i can (working my way along the human body), as well as doing some of my own life drawings, maybe a hand study or something too.

Then theres Visual Literacy, got an essay needing done which i plan on finishing before the end of february (about a month in advance i think). Decided who my first architect im going to write about will be: Norman Foster - Always liked his work

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Going to sketch a few more of his works and then decide on who i think my other architect should be. Ill focus on that this weekend coming up i think.

The main bulk of semester 2's coursework has to be our 3D maya environment, so i quickly decided on what i would (attempt to) create. Its a slightly older sketch of mine that iv always wanted to revisit, and it definately looks challenging enough to keep me occupied the next couple months.
Already been altering the design slightly in my head, the majority of it will stay as it is, however i want something a bit more spectacular than a "normal" fantasy city plopped in some countryside. So im planning on making the city appear to be carved into the side of a mountain, my basic plan to do this would be to raise the city up from the ground, with a mountain path leading up to the entrance, and to have the mountain continue from the back of the main building, which i plan to make into some form of sacred place of worship (got an image in my head of a very natural interior "design" - stalagtites, stalagmites etc, as little in the way of human interferance as possible, with a giant crystal or something to do the same degree in the centre, with light shining upon it from the hole in the roof). Ill get some sketches done for that too.

Since i feel this is going to take me A VERY LONG TIME, iv already started working on it. And as always with maya (from my very limited experience as seen in previous posts) its a painstakingly slow process of trial and error until i get it working the way i want. And any mistakes that go unnoticed are a disastrous loss of time and energy. The Bridge for example, i discovered that while reducing the poly count i accidentally removed a few of the smaller faces, and so that needed to be redone from an earlier file.
And my last module is dynamic communications, where i have teamed up with george to form a group, and we recently brainstormed (or "mind-showered" - political correctness has gone mad) what we would like to do for our project. The plan is to combine our seeds/fields of nature/evolution and medieval architecture/cathedrals, into a hand drawn animation. A storyboard is yet to be drawn out, but we plan on having a sort of "battle" between forces of nature (rock and plant) which try to take control of a mountain valley. Rocks will fall from avalanches and fuse together, while plants will grow around them and try to push them away. But in the end both forces will lead to the creation of a "natural cathedral" (cathedral/temple/place of worship/spectacular "architecture", whatever). Its ambitious and going to be difficult but were planning on starting as soon as we sort of the logistics involved (where to do it, how to keep the camera in the same place, etc) So thats it for now, ill get back to you when mores been done