Saturday, 26 June 2010
...A Little more time now...
I've been playing with my blog layout....Why in Hell didn't I do this before!?
The Best of the Rest....More Links!!
Okay here are some choice snippets I've tracked down in Bloodhound fashion from CGTutsPlus.com:
The Water Tower Tutorial
The Hot Rod Tutorial
The Weapon Tutorial
The Scifi Thingy Tutorial
The Splines Tutorial
These Tutorials all look pretty good at a cursory glance. I haven't had a chance to vet them myself yet so with any luck they will be as kick ass as they seem on the surface...Enjoy!!
The Water Tower Tutorial
The Hot Rod Tutorial
The Weapon Tutorial
The Scifi Thingy Tutorial
The Splines Tutorial
These Tutorials all look pretty good at a cursory glance. I haven't had a chance to vet them myself yet so with any luck they will be as kick ass as they seem on the surface...Enjoy!!
The Useful Shit Rundown...
Not as purile as the title would suggest...
This is basically an expunging of all the links that I've uploaded onto the Uni Facebook site over the past year....
Not one of these links will fail to help you improve as a game artist so lap it up and if you find something useful, for Darwin's sake, upload it to Facebook so your fellow cohort can benefit,
We be family and shit...
Okay this is a great tutorial, a little over worked for a simple dumpster, but it's a great demonstration of High to Low work flow and also tips for texturing...Also CGtutsplus.com is an outstanding website so have a trawl through while you're there, you'll be glad you did...
This is basically an expunging of all the links that I've uploaded onto the Uni Facebook site over the past year....
Not one of these links will fail to help you improve as a game artist so lap it up and if you find something useful, for Darwin's sake, upload it to Facebook so your fellow cohort can benefit,
We be family and shit...
Okay this is a great tutorial, a little over worked for a simple dumpster, but it's a great demonstration of High to Low work flow and also tips for texturing...Also CGtutsplus.com is an outstanding website so have a trawl through while you're there, you'll be glad you did...
Dont ask me why there's a picture of a car, but I kept it cos it's nice!!
This is a plugin for Zbrush, not a tutorial, but if you hit a bottle neck at the UVing stage or you are looking to speed up your workflow it might be just what you need...
This is a plugin for Zbrush, not a tutorial, but if you hit a bottle neck at the UVing stage or you are looking to speed up your workflow it might be just what you need...
www.zbrushcentral.com
ZBrush Discussion Forum
...Advice on the general thought process that goes into realistic texture generation
Food for thought...
...Advice on the general thought process that goes into realistic texture generation
Food for thought...
features.cgsociety.org
If you can't understand why after pouring hours into painstakingly modelling, unwrapping and texturing your model, you can't make it look as pretty as on the forums, chances are it's all in the lighting. This tutorial is quite lengthy but it's worth it for the tips...
If you can't understand why after pouring hours into painstakingly modelling, unwrapping and texturing your model, you can't make it look as pretty as on the forums, chances are it's all in the lighting. This tutorial is quite lengthy but it's worth it for the tips...
Another linkedylink. This badger is on the polycount wiki, which is a good read in itself. But specifically, this is an 'everything you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask...' ...about Normal maps. Answers to questions even seasoned modellers need to know...Check it out...
wiki.polycount.net
..And lastly the now INFAMOUS AK47 Hard-Surface modelling tutorial, this is with out a doubt one of the most entertaining and insightful tutorials on this subject, a word of caution though the normal map generation process he uses is a bit buggy and can produce seams, Check out Racer445's personal website for an update in the not too distant future...!!
See Moreracer445.com
free 3D and game art tutorials by racer445, a hard surface and weapon artist.
Carnival of Links...
The basis of making anything creative is feeding your mind with a large smattering of something interesting...
So it's good to know that in the face of a boredom epidemic there is a small collection of 'Cool Hunting' websites around poised to inoculate you with a painless jab of wholesome interesting-ness...
Now This won't sting too much...This first one is outstanding for the coolest collections of concealed Spy Gadgets, Retro Sci-fi stuff, Underground Urban Exploration and everything in between...Seriously it has to be seen to be believed...
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/02/
This Link is to a website that is alot like Digg but actually interesting...
2leep.com: Connecting Bloggers
The next one is just well interesting if you're interested in Russian stuff!!
Environment Inspiration?
The next one is just well interesting if you're interested in Russian stuff!!
Environment Inspiration?
http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2006/12/20/village-in-ukraine/
This website is pretty interesting too, loads of interesting articles not to mention the one posted here...Some things you just can't imagine unless it happened in real life...
This website is pretty interesting too, loads of interesting articles not to mention the one posted here...Some things you just can't imagine unless it happened in real life...
www.todayifoundout.com
Errr read the title....
....And last but not least, absolutely guaranteed to put a smile on your face if you like the hard trolling...
Errr read the title....
http://www.damninteresting.com/
....And last but not least, absolutely guaranteed to put a smile on your face if you like the hard trolling...
What DOES happen to lost ants!?...THE OTHER BLOG..
Apparently other colonies will accept them, if they don't horribly reject them at the entrance by chewing off their legs and head....
But that's nothing really to do with this post.
I've kinda decided that I'm gonna have two blogs instead of one.
This one is gonna be for the GameArt stuff and stuff that isn't really that relevant.
...And then I'm gonna have another one for the stuff that isn't even remotely relevant, ie the pseudo philosophical stuff...
But that's nothing really to do with this post.
I've kinda decided that I'm gonna have two blogs instead of one.
This one is gonna be for the GameArt stuff and stuff that isn't really that relevant.
...And then I'm gonna have another one for the stuff that isn't even remotely relevant, ie the pseudo philosophical stuff...
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Getting it/Going On...
Well things may be looking up!
I can remember brooding so hard in year 2...doubting.
I wasn't even half way there and I had managed to convince myself that I couldn't measure up to the people around me, let alone what the Game Industry wanted of me.
I guess I can put it down to one thing: Opinion:
Tepid Feedback: I guess not everybody is going to feel as passionate as you do about your work. No-one else can see how much you have busted your ass to improve, how many hours you put into that piece of work, how although it's not perfect; that piece of work that you've slaved over is a marked improvement on what you've been producing.
I really wish I'd had that perspective when I was getting clumsy feedback from various visitors. They see so much work that they become numb to who they trample. One visitor was so negative about the sketchbook that I showed him after a presentation that I almost stopped painting completely!! I was beside myself. It didn't matter how much people told me my stuff was good, I couldn't get that one review out of my head!
The other day I was showing work to a visitor and if I hadn't heard anything more I would have been convinced that he had gone away completely underwhelmed. The next day Mike told me that the visitor had advised that me and some of my cohorts should apply for CodeMasters...soon!
Shitty Death!!
If I had never heard that, I think I would have looked back on that meeting as yet another of the former scenarios above. So now I'm stoked! I could never have conceived of this happening at the end of the course from my vantage point in the second year.
The reason for that is that I had neglected to take into account somebody's opinion:
I'd assumed one thing;
the other was true.
Contemporaries: Game Art, not surprisingly is rife with competition. It's a course based around creating competitive games; of course it'll attract competitive people!
I've never really done well around competitive people. I love a bit of harmless banter around some games, but I could never get my head around the mentality that requires that they be actively 'winning' in all aspects of their life.
Since when do you 'win' at art!?
However if you are around that mentality enough it could start to wear you down.
I was a bald tyre by the second year.
Some people had just convinced me (indirectly) that being great at gameart was unobtainable simply because they saw themselves as number one and that made me feel second rate just by being exposed to their lofty opinion of themselves on a day to day basis.
You can't change an ego maniac, it's just their way of dealing with life and their personal way of motivating themselves to try harder. And good for them if it works. A lot of them are Hares.
If you set your philosophy to being competitive then you run the possibility defaulting to Loser just because you decided that you were running a race.
We tortoises get there in the end. I just never saw art as something that you had to 'win'.
The Ministry of Misinformation: What I realise now is that Gameart is an imprecise science, full of quick fixes and patch jobs and definitely with more than one way of doing things. When I started the course I was polarised by one way of doing things because it was the way that I thought it should be done.
Luckily I had a chance encounter with a tutorial that was COMPLETELY PIVOTAL to the way that I create and understand game art and I duly doled out the tutorial to anybody who wanted it. But nobody else was ever as excited about the DVD as I was.
I guess it was just important to me because it resonated with the style of art I wanted to produce and answered the problems that I was having with making it at that time.
What I now know, and what I learned from that tutorial is that you should never stop evolving your way of working. It sounds like bible bashing but it is so important to find that path of least resistance in your workflow and the only way to do that is to keep searching out new tutorials and new softwares to enhance the quality and speed up the rate at which you can produce your work. If you and I are competing for a job and we can produce a comparable standard of work, it'll come down to who can churn it out quicker.
Accentuating the Positive: A lot of the above is what I learned to avoid but this is what I wish I'd paid more attention to!! All the time I was hating on my work I'd stopped listening to the people who were sympathetic to my cause and who were largely, genuinely supportive of what I had produced during the former years. I just became so bummed out by unlucky circumstances, bad equipment etc that I didn't feel that they were seeing it in a balanced way or that they were just trying to cheer me up! But they were trying to keep me on the right track and help me through darker days and for that I'm extremely grateful.
If their opinions hadn't have been successful I may well have made the biggest mistake of my life and run away from the intimidating lack of prospects in the worst case scenario that I'd constructed in my head.
Epilogue: I was really, really, REEEAALLLY uncertain of my abilities at the end of the second year, so uncertain that I had almost decided to jump ship on the 3rd year and pursue a completely different career.
However I was convinced by my friends to stick out the last year to see what would happen but I was pushing forward with my application for the other career at the same time. Whilst all this was going on, I had decided out of simplicity to keep the proceedings a secret from the teachers.
Imagine if I had told them, they might have thought I'd checked out and maybe they might have checked out on me. If they had done that then I don't think I would have had some of the opportunities that have come my way since then.
So in light of that, you could say that it was the one time my uncertainty had worked in my favour!
The bottom line is that for all the doubting and uncertainty the gulf between knowing nothing and knowing everything is filled with opinion and not that many are anywhere close to the knowing end of the spectrum.
You just have to wait til the end of the race to see who wins.
I can remember brooding so hard in year 2...doubting.
I wasn't even half way there and I had managed to convince myself that I couldn't measure up to the people around me, let alone what the Game Industry wanted of me.
I guess I can put it down to one thing: Opinion:
Tepid Feedback: I guess not everybody is going to feel as passionate as you do about your work. No-one else can see how much you have busted your ass to improve, how many hours you put into that piece of work, how although it's not perfect; that piece of work that you've slaved over is a marked improvement on what you've been producing.
I really wish I'd had that perspective when I was getting clumsy feedback from various visitors. They see so much work that they become numb to who they trample. One visitor was so negative about the sketchbook that I showed him after a presentation that I almost stopped painting completely!! I was beside myself. It didn't matter how much people told me my stuff was good, I couldn't get that one review out of my head!
The other day I was showing work to a visitor and if I hadn't heard anything more I would have been convinced that he had gone away completely underwhelmed. The next day Mike told me that the visitor had advised that me and some of my cohorts should apply for CodeMasters...soon!
Shitty Death!!
If I had never heard that, I think I would have looked back on that meeting as yet another of the former scenarios above. So now I'm stoked! I could never have conceived of this happening at the end of the course from my vantage point in the second year.
The reason for that is that I had neglected to take into account somebody's opinion:
I'd assumed one thing;
the other was true.
Contemporaries: Game Art, not surprisingly is rife with competition. It's a course based around creating competitive games; of course it'll attract competitive people!
I've never really done well around competitive people. I love a bit of harmless banter around some games, but I could never get my head around the mentality that requires that they be actively 'winning' in all aspects of their life.
Since when do you 'win' at art!?
However if you are around that mentality enough it could start to wear you down.
I was a bald tyre by the second year.
Some people had just convinced me (indirectly) that being great at gameart was unobtainable simply because they saw themselves as number one and that made me feel second rate just by being exposed to their lofty opinion of themselves on a day to day basis.
You can't change an ego maniac, it's just their way of dealing with life and their personal way of motivating themselves to try harder. And good for them if it works. A lot of them are Hares.
If you set your philosophy to being competitive then you run the possibility defaulting to Loser just because you decided that you were running a race.
We tortoises get there in the end. I just never saw art as something that you had to 'win'.
The Ministry of Misinformation: What I realise now is that Gameart is an imprecise science, full of quick fixes and patch jobs and definitely with more than one way of doing things. When I started the course I was polarised by one way of doing things because it was the way that I thought it should be done.
Luckily I had a chance encounter with a tutorial that was COMPLETELY PIVOTAL to the way that I create and understand game art and I duly doled out the tutorial to anybody who wanted it. But nobody else was ever as excited about the DVD as I was.
I guess it was just important to me because it resonated with the style of art I wanted to produce and answered the problems that I was having with making it at that time.
What I now know, and what I learned from that tutorial is that you should never stop evolving your way of working. It sounds like bible bashing but it is so important to find that path of least resistance in your workflow and the only way to do that is to keep searching out new tutorials and new softwares to enhance the quality and speed up the rate at which you can produce your work. If you and I are competing for a job and we can produce a comparable standard of work, it'll come down to who can churn it out quicker.
Accentuating the Positive: A lot of the above is what I learned to avoid but this is what I wish I'd paid more attention to!! All the time I was hating on my work I'd stopped listening to the people who were sympathetic to my cause and who were largely, genuinely supportive of what I had produced during the former years. I just became so bummed out by unlucky circumstances, bad equipment etc that I didn't feel that they were seeing it in a balanced way or that they were just trying to cheer me up! But they were trying to keep me on the right track and help me through darker days and for that I'm extremely grateful.
If their opinions hadn't have been successful I may well have made the biggest mistake of my life and run away from the intimidating lack of prospects in the worst case scenario that I'd constructed in my head.
Epilogue: I was really, really, REEEAALLLY uncertain of my abilities at the end of the second year, so uncertain that I had almost decided to jump ship on the 3rd year and pursue a completely different career.
However I was convinced by my friends to stick out the last year to see what would happen but I was pushing forward with my application for the other career at the same time. Whilst all this was going on, I had decided out of simplicity to keep the proceedings a secret from the teachers.
Imagine if I had told them, they might have thought I'd checked out and maybe they might have checked out on me. If they had done that then I don't think I would have had some of the opportunities that have come my way since then.
So in light of that, you could say that it was the one time my uncertainty had worked in my favour!
The bottom line is that for all the doubting and uncertainty the gulf between knowing nothing and knowing everything is filled with opinion and not that many are anywhere close to the knowing end of the spectrum.
You just have to wait til the end of the race to see who wins.
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