So we have decided that we are going to try and get the game published before the start of the next semester, but we still have a ton of stuff to do. Here is our task list for the rest of the semester for art:

1 - Outer level poly reset - We need to optimize the poly counts for objects in the outer playing area. 
1 - Smoke trail particles - Put particle systems on the feet and hands that enhance the feeling of the character falling.
1 - Flower model popup- Flowers will popup on the ground around the radius of the splash. We need a flower mesh, and texture that will just translate and scale up through the ground.
1 - Fix Legs on character mesh - Character needs to not crumble. One attempt is to upres the mesh. 

2 - More Hoizontal objects - This may not mean more new objects, but just populating the Horizontal plane (bottom) of the game. 
2 - Fire escape and clothes line effects - The objects need to be added and ready to work with the correlating code. 
2 - Intro animations - Adam and his motion capture stuff. We need to integrate his animations with the in game scene or a separate scene he creates the animation in. 

3 - Buildings update - All buildings need another pass on them to improve mesh on some and texture on others. Pay close attention to our color pallette. 
3 - Textures related to saturation - This is dependant on the code george is trying to get a texture to desaturate.

4 - Ripple Splat - Have the particle effect of the splash have more of a ripple effect over the landscape

5 - Achievement system - This would require a lot of art, UI etc. 
5 - Themed cities - China town, San Fran, with bridge etc could be considered.

6 - Zelda Ripple effect - This is super low priority and more a pipe dream. Akin to this Zelda video.

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So we are slowly working through this list. I've made the flower and I'm trying to lower the poly count on some of the objects. After that, I'm going to try build more objects that we can use to populate our scene. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Old version (left) & new version (right).

So since last week when I posted the original entry on my digital painting assignment, I've kept working on it since I've found that I really enjoy doing it even if it takes me a while.

The biggest thing about this version is that I added a pattern to the dress. A few people in my cohort said that they liked the improvements, but that the dress needed a pattern. I found a pattern that I really like and overlaid it over the dress and umbrella. Someone else had also mentioned that the shadow in the middle was kind of weird and suggested to make it smaller. The same person helped me get a quick and simple shadow, which I think adds a lot to the painting.

Now my concern is that the highlights aren't as visible anymore. I made some shadows darker, and fixed the geisha's right foot since it was just a bit off balance. Last, I managed to put some pupils in her eyes, many people said that she looked like a zombie without them. I will continue to work on it when I get a chance, hopefully this will even become a nice portfolio piece.

Thanks for reading.

So, I was fortunate enough to have been picked for an internal internship here at the University of Utah doing 3D environmental art for a project with the School of Computing. First let me start by giving a quick overview of what the project is.

The School of Computing has been working on a project for people that have suffered spinal cord injuries, and while I don't know all the specifics for it, we the team that I joined was hired to make a new environment for the device known as the Treadport. If you want to know more about the project, you can read an article and watch a video of how the device works.

I'm the only artist in the team, so I will be in charge of making all the art assets for the game. There will be different modes or challenges to the game to try and measure peoples performance. The game has to include these modes: 10 meter test, 6 minute test, a snipe hunt mini-game, directed collection, and a destination quest. There is no HUD or input to this game, so we've had to come up with a different way to get all these modes into the game by creating one map where patient spawns. Then the patient will have to walk to the activity that he or she would like to do and then we will load the next "room" where the activity will take place.

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but the setting has to be a farm, so with that in mind I've started to work on some of the land marks that will be placed around the main map. They will be: a barn house. a wind mill, water silo, grain silo, and a house. They all need to be big enough that the patient will be able to see them from anywhere in the level. Here is the basic level layout that we've talked about in the past and its what I'm working off for the moment:


I will post a render of the barn house as soon as I'm done with the model. I want to finish this post by saying that I'm really excited about getting this internship, it will give me much needed experience not only working on more art, but also working with a new team and being able to get all this done.

Thanks for reading!

This shows my first (left) and final (right) try at the assignment.

I looked for a sketch online that I liked and that I could use to do the assignment for since I didn't know if I could create one that I would like. After doing a quick search for geisha sketches, I found this one that I really like from a Deviant Art member called Melody ( link to her original sketch ) and I loved it right away.

I took it into Sketch Book and did a quick trace, and after getting help from people in my group I made some modifications to the sketch like: rounding out her face a bit to give it a more feminine look, as well as giving her bigger feet, and changing a bit her left elbow.

The picture above shows my first try, and I think I didn't do a good job with the color palette since it looks a little too dark. I redid the assignment after doing the changes I mentioned above with a new color palette, and I think it looks much better than my first try. I also found that it took less time and I was able to put in a little more detail in the shadows the second time around.

My classmates and professor have suggested that I should keep working on it and add a pattern to the dress. I will definitely keep working on it and add a pattern since it would make it look so much better, I just have to find some reference images that I like. That is all for now, thanks for reading.

So I've been slowly working on getting all the models that I'm going to need for my micro environment. Here are the models that I have so far:

Bridge to cross a narrow part of the lake.

This is the main gate to the garden.

This is an itsukushima or a water shrine.

So I don't usually post random stuff in this blog about games that I'm currently playing, but seeing as how my professors keep getting on my case that I don't do enough blog posts, I think this will be another section that I continue to include in my blog. This isn't suppose to be a review about the game, specially since I haven't passed it yet and it wouldn't be fair without knowing everything about the game.

Anyways, as you all know Assassin's Creed 3 was released this last week, and being the fanboy that I am, I pre-ordered it and everything. I only managed to stat playing it two days ago, and I've only been able to put the controller down to eat and do homework. Its amazing how much each game changes as time goes on, and each game always has things that they do better, and some that I wonder why they changed them at all when they used to work so well.

One of the things that I really liked about the previous games was that whenever you used your pistol, it was always really quick when it reloaded for the next shoot. Maybe this wasn't very realistic, but its a game so whatever... Anyways, with this game they introduced full sized pistols (not just a little pistol hidden in your bracelet) and the reloading takes FOREVER!!! This might be more realistic to the time period than the other games have been, but you can't get your players used to one thing and then switch it on them. This has made me almost not count on the pistol at all since I can usually kill an enemy in half the time that it takes to reload the pistol, and maybe this is exactly what they wanted for people to use the pistol less often... but I still don't like it.

One thing that I really like was the way that they changed the fighting system. Before, it was almost pointless to try and fight the enemies, since it was easier to just stand in once place holding your block button and counter your enemies' attack. They have gotten rid of the block button, and replaced it with a parry that only work for a split second, so you have to time it right and also have to take action in the fight more than the previous games.

Also, I'm glad that they also added some of the other weapons like the rope dart. This thing is amazing, it lets you choke your enemies if you are standing above them and then you can reuse the same dart, or you can hang them from the ledge you were standing on and consume your dart.

I could keep going and going about how much I love AC3, but I think I will stop for now, this way I can make another entry in a few days after I've advanced much further in the game. Thanks for reading.

So this last Wednesday, my group managed to submit our game to the IGF competition as we take the rest of this week off to relax and work on homework from other classes. I'm actually still a little tired from this last weekend from having slept in the computer lab, hopefully that won't happen again since I don't know if I could handle it again.

So this is the weekend before we have to turn in our project to IGF. There is still a lot of work to be done in the art side of things, and there is not enough hours in the day to get everything done. This is mainly due to the trouble that our project has been in over the last few months, and why the other two teams are in much better shape than us. So I have brought one of my sleeping bags with me and a pillow to get at least some sleep at night.

So this next week is going to be Fall break and it will give me time to catch up on a lot of work that I've been trying to do all semester. For example, on Monday nights there is an art class for the new cohort that started this semester, and I'm sitting in on that class to try and have more experience with Art. Unfortunately  I haven't been able to finish many of the assignments from that class because there is always something that I need to do for my other classes where I am going to be getting a grade.

One of the last assignments that was due this last Tuesday was to work on a replica model of a building in Salt Lake City. I decided to work on the Utah State Capitol building and I managed to get most of the model done, but not enough to move on to doing the textures for it. Here is a quick render of where the model is at:

So we are suppose to start thinking about what our final project will consist of since basically we will have to create a micro environmental. I didn't really know what I was going to do until a week ago I was talking to another artist from the cohort and she said that since I love Japanese culture so much, why didn't I create a Japanese garden for my scene. I really liked that idea, so now I'm rolling with it. I "m not very good at sketching, but I've been working on some ideas of how it could be laid out and a simple model for a bridge that will be in the scene. Below is some of the work that I've done on my final project idea.

So art team has been spending some time in pre-production again, since we need to get a clear focus on how the art has to look. As you know, we have abandoned the idea of dropping zombies from buildings, so we are now going with a more abstract look for the game and following in the direction that Flower by Jenova Chen. Some of the game play mechanics are still a little fuzzy, but that will hopefully be cleared up in the next few days.

So my task for this weekend was to write up a 1 page document on how the level could look like, along with some possible color pallets. Here is what I came up with:

Overview:

• At this point, we have talked about making the environment look run-down and abandoned.
• We still want to make it look like a city, but at first it will look dry and lifeless. 
• Once the player has reached the bottom, the parts that have been hydrated will look new again.

Look of level before player starts:

Dry/Dead

Hydrated/Alive

So the thesis project that I'm a part of has been through a lot of changes over the last few months. If you remember my last post, we had presented Drop Dead to the professors but they still weren't happy with what we had. We spend a week trying to work on a different character, each of the artist had to come up with something else that the player could control with the Kinect. I created a simple teddy bear  model that one of the other artist would be able to do a quick simple rig so we could start experimenting with the new characters each of us we had created.

So last week Nathan (our game arts teacher) talked about how drawing don't have to start complicated, we can draw almost anything using simple shapes and then add detail in layers until it looks like what we want. This is probably really basic, but I don't have much experience in 2D art.

For this week, we were suppose to create five things all bases around a common theme which are: a hero, an animal sidekick, a villain, a weapon, and a vehicle. I've been having a lot of issues with most of them, but here is my best sketches from the group.

So this post is a little late seeing as how the semester started 2 weeks ago, but late is better than never (or so I hear).

So at the end of last semester, we were told that our game needed a lot of work because the player couldn't really tell what was happening most of the time. (Refer back to this post to know what the game is.) So over the summer, a couple of the producers worked really hard to come up with a new game idea that still involved falling as a game mechanic, but that was far more appealing that Graviators. The product of their work was: "Drop Dead: Zombie Divers".

There really isn't a narrative at the moment, but the premise of the game is that the player chooses a zombie from a group of other zombies and then drop it off a skyscraper. The player will then use the Kinect to control the falling zombie to dodge obstacles in the environment and make it all the way to the bottom and... splat! Along the way, the player would be able to find power ups and multipliers to get a higher score which is also affect on wether you reach the bottom or not.

We worked really hard to have a playable demo by the first day of class, since we wanted to make sure that the professors could see that we had taken the feedback we received seriously and had done something about it. The professors loved the new idea, but there was still one problem... zombies.

The professors think that zombies are over used in todays game market, and if we want our game to stand out at the IGF we should do something a little more original. So they told us to stop development of other assets (for us the artist) and work on developing other ideas and test them out in the game to see how it feels. So far we have been working on things like: scarecrows, clowns, teddy bears, and other crazy stuff.

Our next meeting as a group will be this next Wednesday, so thats when I will give an update on what I've been working on (I've been doing the scarecrow and teddy bear btw) and see if its still something that we want to do. In my opinion, I don't think that zombies are a bad idea. If the game is good, who cares if its zombies or mummies or bears falling.

What I think we should be focusing (and this is a little more for the producers) is on making a cohesive narrative for the game that makes sense and that it isn't too complicated. It could be something as simple as the narrative in Angry Birds, but they get really complicated really quickly and then it doesn't make sense.

Hopefully they will have something nailed down by next time, because this whole thing is actually making me kind of nervous since we don't have time to be experimenting this late in the year when IGF submissions are due at the end of October. Anyways, thanks for reading.