Also, Single Rider got into Best of Ringling, so that's cool. I got to go to a preview opening of the gallery last night, but the actual show opens tonight. The invader space is available to play but the resolution of the display is wrong so the gun takes up half of the screen...so sorry, but I have no control over that. Its still fun though, and yes you can break it.
GDC went pretty much exactly how I expected it to: positive feedback on Funland images, pretty much no feedback on anything else. Didn't really have to leave Ringling for that but I did get some positive reinforcement and useful art tips that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Despite certain frustrations I am glad that some of my work was appreciated. I think the biggest thing I gained from being there is the realization that I need to figure out what I really want to do and the fact that I'm not doing that is the cause of most of my frustrations. Overall, I think I did very well and I was told that my work stood out among that of the other students who were there. I learned that texturing is my strength while lighting is my weakness so I will try to polish that up a bit before the end of the month.
This was the Single Rider panel at the Ringling booth. Mine was the only current senior work represented, the rest was from some of last years graduates. It was difficult to get a good picture of it. That tiny blurry part at the bottom is my name.
I updated my portfolio site yesterday. Now when you click on the 'Thesis' tab there is a video of my current trailer. I'm not going to upload it to youtube this time so if you want to see it go there. This update includes spawn, invader, monster and beauty animation, as well as some effects and lighting tweaks, so check it out.
I really do love monsters. The other day I got this book by John Landis, a man who I'm pretty sure I must somehow be distantly related to , and it is so full of goodness.
My favorite page is a collage of the classic monster carry.
Anyway, that brings me to my monster...it's alive!
Animation is going well after a few hiccups in the beginning, mostly due to me not knowing what I'm doing at all. This is just a test to make sure that things are working well together before I try to put it in the actual level. I have all his actions split into four animations (walk, stomp, block and rawr) and I blended them together through matinee. The timing still needs some work and you'll have to imagine him being shot. I have the material change set up too, for after that happens. I still only have damage on his head, not sure what else I'm going to do with it, if anything, yet. This is also obviously not the angle it will be seen from.
I've started the mysterious process of rigging and animating for the characters in my thesis. I decided to start with the sultry beauty because I knew she would be the simplest.
She has a really simple rig:
Originally I was only going to make her a ragdoll in UDK but some complications arose with certain scenes in my trailer. I decided that it would be easiest to do a couple of simple animations for when I wanted her movement to be more specific. Like this one...I know its not much but it's my first Maya animation, other than a ball bounce a few years ago. This was really just a test to see if I could get animation out of maya and into udk because I had never done it before. I might eventually want to add a little swing to her legs after they pick her up out of the car instead of having her joints lock into place right away.
But for scenes where I'm going for more of that mangled corpse look the ragdoll sim works just fine.
The creature process is moving, I reduced the high poly mesh to a just under 15,000 tri in game model and baked normal and ao maps from the zbrush sculpt. This is how it stands in UDK right now. Next up diffuse and specular. I'm also going to work on sculpting in some damage for an alternate skin. Going for a terminator kinda thing to expose the animatronic skeleton underneath.
Some of
you may be wondering, who is this terrifying creature? Well...you really
shouldn't ask so many questions, but if you must know...
It
is a radioactive mutant crustaceous bug creature that lives by hive
mentality and has a nasty temper. Its only motivations are to grow and
protect its nest of spawn. It is far more intelligent than you might
think, even smart enough to lure the rider into its lair with the use
of cleverly placed sultry beauties. Clearly, it has a better
understanding of us than we have of it. It even took control of the
invaders and turned them into its minions. It plays this game for two
reasons: one, to defend its nest from outsiders, and two, because radioactive mutant crustaceous bug
creatures have to eat too.
This is the scale difference I'm going for between the sultry beauty and the creature. I'm going to have to adjust my final shots to make this work a bit better.
I also made a new trailer cut, primarily because of the changes to funland and some fun I've been having with sound effects. I think that they really add a lot to the feel of the thing and drive home some points that may have otherwise been too subtle.
I took a much deserved and necessary break from thesis for the past month or so and now its time to focus on finishing things up. I made some minor changes to funland, mostly the trees, but I touched a few other things as well.
I've started modeling the creature as well. So far I just have a block model out in maya for the body and one in
zbrush for the head. I'm playing with some ideas for articulation,
especially in the claws. I also tweaked the silhouette a little bit, it has more of a hunch back now.
