Pre-GDC

So it is the day before I am traveling out to GDC... Not sure what to expect other than what I read online haha. Feel a combination of excitement and nervousness when I think about it. I go armed with business cards and resumes. Meanwhile project news: working on some buildings for a project:

Other than that still polishing animations among other things. Seems there was a bit of trouble with one project, lost an artist, so when I return I may have to try my hand at level design in Unity (not a bad idea, would be interesting).

Alright, little late again this week but been working on animation mainly. Sorry for the quality of the video I will post but it gets the basic point across which is a preview of a string of animations. If all works well we can use these to have the creature basically play a portion of it when doing some action such as walking or attacking.

As you can see I have refined this character a bit from the previous version. Fur looks a lot smoother, some more details on the face, normal map with some minor sculpting applied.

Here are the animations . It has been awhile since I have animated, so lets consider these rough animations for now. However, I also feel I will never be fully satisfied with the result at this time. I suppose more confidence would come with more practice! Taking a character from a simple sketch to a full on animating character is definitely a time consuming process. Still, it is definitely a good way to pick up a lot of skills quickly, or brush up on some things one may be rusty on.

Other projects still in the works, got some 2D animation coming up, hopefully I can get some more of that done before I head out to GDC. Also, I recently joined the Age of Aincrad team! It is a really big project setting out to create a game inspired by the popular Sword Art Online anime. To find out more about it be sure to check out facebook or their forums.

Whew, lots happening recently. I look forward to seeing where all these projects go though!

So busy I missed a week. Anyways, still working on various art endeavors to improve including a couple projects. On deck atm is this guy:

I dislike the fur pattern a bit, so will try and blend it together more. Other than that is it just refining details now and the bump map. This model is taking some time as I had to learn about alphas almost from scratch. Been learning a lot lately, it seems you can find tutorials for just about anything on youtube or floating around the internet.

Another thing I was looking at was atavism, but it seems somewhat incomplete at this time (see http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/atavism-whats-your-opinion.260957/). A lot of base elements are there, but to truly customize you still need to know how to create content. Honestly the idea reminds me a lot of Spore:galactic adventures. I put together a few scenarios/missions in that. It was cool, but no matter what you do the weapons or powers are the same presets. To add more you would have to get into the code and then add models, effects the works, or sub out what is already there for something else.

Anyways, that is all I got for game creation etc for the last couple weeks. See you again soon for more updates!