The Grinterloper

Pikachu just scared the balls off me.

2011-05-17T14:57:00.001+01:00

I started rigging and this happened.

Pikachu

2011-05-08T20:04:00.002+01:00

Name says it all, pikachu, rigging next

Improved kadabra

2011-05-08T14:16:00.003+01:00

Went back into the texture a re-did it, using a textured brush rather than flat colour.

Texturing.

2011-05-06T16:47:00.002+01:00

I'm going to play around with the rendering and shading, but I'm unsure as to if I should break from the source material in the texturing, at the moment it just seems a bit...empty.

Thoughts?

Who's that pokemon?!?!?!?!

2011-05-05T17:37:00.003+01:00

Just a rough render of something I'm working on. I also have a model of a certain yellow mouse creature which I'll post later.

3D Sloop Illustration.

2011-05-04T16:19:00.006+01:00

I've been experimenting with different texturing methods. For this quick model of an 18th century sloop I decided to play with mapping hatching to the texture, some interesting results but I think I'd need to do a lot of work to make it really useable, it'd probably be easier to make a shader for it like the one used in the MVC intro. Also a bigger texture map for the sea.

Learning to learn again.

2011-04-18T17:41:00.004+01:00

So I've not been doing much 3D recently, instead I've been revisiting an area which I've overlooked for a while now

I refer of course, to drawing. I found it funny returning to this area after such a long time of focusing purely on 3D becaue I expected to just suck on toast, infact more than expected, I actually feared it and fear of failure is one of the the mosty crippling things to ones creativity, what I found however was an odd clarity concerning what has always held me back when i try to take a sketch and turn it into a nice clean drawing.

Writing about it now makes it seem to obvious but it still came as a revelation, The problem I was having, was I just wasn't paying enough attention to how my linework described the structure of the figure, Yeah I know crazy revelation to make, probably should have worked that one out in my first year at uni but hey, better late than never. I knew it was important on an intellectual level, but what occurred recently was more a case of the penny dropping than anything else.

Anyway, enough out of me, here are some character concepts for the enemies which shall be featured in the Kremlin the Penguin video game, I give you the capitalist pigs.

In Soviet Russian art concept you.

2011-03-30T20:35:00.004+01:00

I've not updated in a while but I will have a few updates o their way soon

For now enjoy some artwork for a side scrolling platformer I've been working on in my spare time with a group of talented individuals.

I started Sketching some ideas for the titular character, one "Kremlin the Penguin."

At first when I was testing ideas I found my designs were very contrived, I was thinking too much (for the initial stages at least) once I realised this and loosened up, my hands began to glide into existence a menagerie of varyingly bizzare mutants

Eventually I had a selection of shapes to work with and I could start being more obsessive and precise with my details.

Designed from left to right in chronological order.

The character of Kremlin evolved with the drawings too, I started looking to simply make him cute, but eventually he turned into a wild eyed mad man (sorry penguin) held as a political prisoner for years until freed by his comrades in the Russian revolution!

Once I had the character design down I started working on a kind of production still for the game, figuring out an over all style for everything. The challenge was to create a scene that made the world feel rich and populated whilst avoiding becomming too prominent, it's job is to sit in the background and not be too distracting to the player.

The style I went for was part Lou Romano, part Genndy Tartokovsky and part (theme fitting) soviet era illustration (but mostly Lou Romano) If the world is to be more than a few screens long it needs to feel rich but it can't require an excessive amount of time to create. To this end I chose a style which focuses on the essentials. A strong (almost abstract) silhouette and minimal surface detail is enough to communicate what the object is but avoids the pitfalls of being too distracting and/or requiring too much work to complete. and through layering and clever colour choices it can still create a very "deep-pan" world.

As for the colour scheme I went with a very obvious set of cold and warms. I'd like to pretend there was more thought to it than "oo that looks nice" but sometimes just playing around with gradients yields results.

Quick lunchtime sketch

2011-02-10T14:08:00.001Z

As the title says. Thought I'd post it here just because I've not updated in ageeeees.

Working on some stuff atm which I can't post online for a while yet but stay tuned.

Robots! What move and are textured.

2010-12-14T15:32:00.003Z

So here is a test animation of the Stompatron robot for Stackopolis. Changes not shown here include the delay of the final stomp which I have made happen as soon as the crazy spinning stops and of course the IKs on the leg which lead to the foot clipping into the world. The design of the robot makes it a bit difficult to fix this and make the animation look right but I have some ideas.

Anyway I'm proud of this fellah for now. I took him from design to modelling, texturing, rigging and animation. It was a difficult trip as I'm not very well versed with rigging but I learned a lot from this guy and I enjoyed it, so the time it will take to really get a grip on rigging seems a little less daunting.

Stompatron Ultimate STOMP! from Simon Ashbery on Vimeo.

ROBOTS!!!!

2010-12-03T14:28:00.004Z

Work on Stackopolis is steaming along and now we have a solid alpha of the game we're putting the story together.

To provide a reason for all the building that needs to be done I offered forth a suggestion of including one of my favorite things in the whole wide world in the game. BIG STOMPY ROBOTS!

So here are a handful of sketches for the robot (in reverse order of development) which will be causing all manner of havoc in Stackopolis.

Some art deco robots because why the hell not

I was worried the one on the left was too serious looking but everyone liked it so yay. Design influences from ye olde Gundam series.

Some development sketches on a few choice thumbnails.

A few choice thumbnails.

Stackopolis, REDUX, RELOADED, THE SEQUAL OF THE REMAKE OF THE ADAPTATION DELUX!!!!

2010-11-19T12:05:00.004Z

So as most of you know I have a job. I work as a "creative" for Bloc Media http://www.blocmedia.com/ an awesome media/games studio based in Shoreditch.

Some time a go they created the excellently addictive http://www.stackopolis.com/flash.html

Soon after i came on board, we started working on a new version of the game for the mobile phone market, using the retardedly easy to use unity 3D engine, seriously this engine is the shit.

At the moment there are three of us working on the game and everything is coming along nicely.

Just so I can show off what I've been doing and hopefully drum up some interested for the game amongst my friends.

So here are some quick renders of the four different worlds I've created the artwork for.

They are:

Classic City

Neon Punk

Sunken Atlantis

Lunar Station City

and the textures I've been painting. All very low res, a maximum of 256x256

Net Neutrality.

2010-11-17T17:09:00.003Z

I thought I'd provide a dump for my e-mails to Ed Vaizey. His proposition to do away with Net Neutrality in the UK angered me as well as many people around the country and I felt compelled to email him.

I got a response after my initial questions which led me to hope for a discussion on the matter but he never replied to my response. Either he felt argued into a corner or the sheer weight of people pissed off at him has him cowering under a desk in Whitehall, sucking his thumb and wanking into a Union Jack.

Why am I putting my e-mails here? Because I think I'm super awesome? Well we all have an ego,but I put my feelings about net neutrality quite succinctly into my e-mails and figured I may as well post them up to see how other people felt.

So what are your thoughts?

"

Me:

"Just a few points.

"good for business,"

1: It's good for large established businesses as they can afford to pay for priority service. Not for any web- entrepreneurs.

"good for the economy"

2: The most accessible and widespread venue for new businesses is the internet. If you stack it against the smaller, startup companies you're effectively killing off the generation of new companies and ideas in the UK.

"good for people"

3: Apart from the aforementioned entrepreneurs losing out, the general public will be funneled through an effectively smaller internet, with a choice between well served large websites or struggling through smaller potentially more interesting sites. How exactly is this good for them? They're losing out on the service they already get.

"Content and service providers should have the ability to innovate and, most importantly, to reach users,"

4: This is the complete opposite of what should be done to promote innovation.

No I don't expect a response. But this really is just silly.

-Simon."

Ed:

"Have you read the whole speech?

Ed Vaizey MP
Minister for Culture
Member of Parliament for Wantage & Didcot

Sent from my iPhone"

Me:

"Ed

The only answers to my questions in the speech are promises that the management would be regulated. That the companies wouldn't be allowed to degrade service too much and that everything they do would be transparent.

This is great on paper of course but in practice such regulation is not guaranteed to be utterly water-tight. Who's to say that companies wont push it as far as they can? Slowly pushing the boundaries back? Who's definition of fair use will be employed? Will it be the same as mine? Will the regulating body be utterly infallible? Even if the transparency works and I can see exactly what my choices are who's to say there will be an option which suits me?

The only water tight method of ensuring the system stays fair is to maintain net neutrality, that way the discussion of fair use is binary, either it is or it isn't.

"We should tread very carefully. In order for the

Internet to continue as the open, innovative force for good

that it has been over the past 20 years"

How do you propose to maintain the internets openness by reducing how open it is? Even if your proposed regulations work perfectly the fact remains that even the slightest management of service in the suggested way reduces how open it is. Open internet is the definition of net neutrality.

Which leads me onto my final point,

"People don’t even agree what is

meant by net neutrality. It is a term which means different

things to different people. "

This trope has been doing the rounds amongst politicians and business people alike for a long time now. Net Neutrality is clearly defined. Besides which it's name leaves little to interpretation, Net Neutrality, neutrality of the net.

Here is the original paper on net neutrality by Tim Wu, the man who coined the term "Net Neutrality:"

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=388863
"

Sack Rig Test from Simon Ashbery on Vimeo.

I completely ran out of steam with my modelling. I've been trudging environment models for a while now and without any variety I feel a bit burnt out with modelling in general. The reason for the manic focus on environment art is because I've always preferred character modelling but felt I hadn't done any environment modelling for a while so I should focus on that.

Well I went to do some character modelling and whilst I got a decent bit of work done it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

So I've decided to look at some areas of CG which aren't my usual cup of tea. In my third year at uni I had a bit of a trial by fire with rigging and rendering. I enjoyed it but it was very much a bodge job from start to finish. With that in mind my new project is to create a rig for a sack character and refine what I learned into a really usable skill.

I'm sure most people who've animated at some point in their lives know all about the sack, I know everyone on my course does. I want to revisit the fundamentals of animation later down the line, and I think having my very own sack rig would be great.

This is just a test. It's FK only and a pretty simple skeleton, but I just wanted to re-familiarise myself with using the joint tool and the connection editor.

WIP Comic.

2010-08-24T14:59:00.003+01:00

I've always wanted to draw a comic. I mean, I've drawn them before, I imagine most people have probably jotted something down in the back of their school books before. I've even had slightly more serious forays which never quite went anywhere. But the one thing I've never managed to do is make a credible web comic.

The reason I've always wanted to have a crack at it is because, since the late 90's I've been reading Penny-Arcade, Mac-Hall, Applegeeks and so on. All of these comics were a great read and they painted a (somewhat idealised) view of a world of geekery and nerdisimo shared between friends that I wanted to be a part of. It would be no exaggeration to say that I've partly modelled my life around these comics in the same way people emnulate their heroes.

I'm older now. Probably about the age a lot of these cartoonists were when I was reading their awesome work. I have no intention of becoming a successful full-time web cartoonist and artist (as many of my heroes have.) It's not what I want to do and I doubt I'd have the patience anyway. I just want to have a go and see how I fare.

So here is a WIP of the first page of a (very) short comic about one of my experiences at work. I just want to get a feeling for how I'd like to draw comic. Testing myself to see if I could actually make something half good in a reasonable amount of time.

Cublicle

2010-08-23T18:55:00.002+01:00

Bit of modelling work. I'm pushing myself to get back into modelling regularly again. I've been trying to find a job for the last two weeks and I have some leads so I think i'll get on with my folio

Train carriage.

2010-08-12T17:41:00.006+01:00

Ok I'm happier with it now. after some good crits from the guys over at grand games and of course from my good friend Craig "i'm a complete and utter arse candle!" Yates, I changed a few things.

I also made good on my promise to create various levels of damage in the textures.

Also I'm trying out a new less busy portfolio theme. I like It and will update my folio soon.

Train Carriage Finished (kind of)

2010-08-10T16:05:00.003+01:00

I have to wait for the guys over at Grand Games to give me any feedback as to what needs changing and there are one or two things I've decided I dislike now that I've rendered everything out. But for all intents and purposes this is the finished article.

currently the texture maps are at 2048x2048 but I will resize that when it comes to putting it into Unreal.

Aside from the colour variations I'm also going to create different levels of decay.

Train Carriage

2010-08-04T22:11:00.002+01:00

I've been looking for some mod work to bolster up my portfolio and I was asked to create a test model for http://www.grand-games.com/

It's a flat-bed for transporting shipping containers by rail. There was remarkably little reference material so I had to sort of piece this together from many different designs and images.

2,184 polygons

The wait.

2010-08-02T10:03:00.003+01:00

I emailed my applications off last night, so now it's the waiting game. I originally said I was going to take some time off to enjoy being home with my family. Then, eventually, i'd start working on other projects, but as I was hitting send last night I started thinking about the weaknesses of my portfolio, specifically when it came to environment art.

So now I'm stuck looking down the barrel end of the mod scene.

I wanted to put an image up of the last mod work I did but it's since been removed from CS Banana. Lame. It was effin' years a go.

Oh well. No rest for the wicked.

FINE!

2010-07-30T19:06:00.003+01:00

Ok it looked like knobs and was too busy. New CV:

Folio Pains!

2010-07-29T21:51:00.005+01:00

I'm sitting here waiting for my smegging turntables to render and I'm bored. So I figured I would make an update here since I've been silent for a few days and everyone knows how much I like to drone on and on. About myself mostly...did you know I can walk on my hands? Zounds! I love that word.

Anyway I have my portfolio ready to roll. Just need to sort my show-reel and I'm there. Time to try for jobs. But before then here are the last couple of models I made as well as my snazzy CV.

Stone Arch Mk2

2010-07-23T19:53:00.005+01:00

Continuing the remake theme I redid the stone arch, though it's not an upgrade like the funk mobile but an entirely new model. the original one was a test, just so i could learn Zbrush. I was impressed with it at the time but in hindsight it was a bit pap. It's shape made no sense and the texture was a bit bland.

I'm getting used to working with textured brushes now but I need to practice more at being more precise with my painting.

I think I should get off the computer and get my sketchbook out. Well...maybe after another couple of models.

The Funk Mobile. MK 2

2010-07-22T21:34:00.004+01:00

Finished this bad boy off. Getting faster at texturing though there is some stuff I may go back and redo.

I think I may start applying to places. Ya know.... for a job?

The Funk-Mobile MK II (teaser)

2010-07-19T16:28:00.002+01:00

It's been a mad couple of weeks. Graduating, moving home, catching, or rather trying and failing to catch, up with old friends and spending quality time with the family.

As such I've had little time to crack on with my folio and with the desire to find a job and get on with my life burning in me (though that may be the gonorrhea) I decided to get down and dirty with what I have (in terms of work, not STDs.)

So the model I was most pleased with for my work on the Pure Funk was the funk mobile but I decided I couldn't put any wire-frames of it on my folio because of how horrible inefficient it's mesh was! So for a while I was content to just have high quality beauty render of it instead.

Well that's just lazy and stupid isn't it? So I decided to spend a day optimising the mesh to something closer in-line with current gen vehicles (10 - 15 k ish) once I did that I figured I may as well go the whole hog. Re-UV, normals and finally texture maps.

So here is a teaser of my progress. It's the sculpt I created in Zbrush including details like bolts holding together hastily attached plates of metal and lots of rust and paint damage.

Enjoy!

Making of the rifle

2010-06-28T19:23:00.002+01:00

Making Of Baker Musket Rifle from Simon Ashbery on Vimeo.

Finished Rifle.

2010-06-26T17:47:00.002+01:00

So I've finished it. My ability with realistic textures has certainly improved but I still have a lot to work on. At the end of the model I see many things I would have done differently but then, hey that's learning right?

Anyway here's the final piece. I'll put up some wire-frames later.

I aimed for around 6,000 tris and and after optimising from around 8,000 I finished with 6,338, I give myself a 10% deviation on poly limits so I hit my mark.

If anyone see's anything I should fix please say so. For now I need a break till my next project.

Rifle Update

2010-06-25T16:02:00.001+01:00

working on the texture. i need to do a lot more work on realistic textures. some feedback would be welcome.

WIP Baker Rifle

2010-06-13T18:10:00.001+01:00

Finished the base mesh for the main rifle. I'm saving the flintlock mechanism for last since it's going to be a tricky model to pull off.

WIP Baker rifle

2010-06-12T10:56:00.002+01:00

Just a small update on modelling progress. It's a deceptively tricky model to get right I initially thought that the main wooden body was pretty much one straight piece but it actually curves and undulates in lots of fascinatingly difficult ways.

Finished Lamp

2010-06-10T18:10:00.003+01:00

A turn around of three days this time. granted 2 for the model and normals and today for the texture (though I did take several prolonged breaks today)

anyway enough excuses. I worked a lot more with photo reference this time to get a more realistic look to the texture. I'm quite pleased with how it came out though I think I may stick some details like warning stickers on the base two thirds of the way up.

My next model I think might be a guitar but Betty gave me some good reference material for a more cartoony looking set of models which I'd like to give a go.

I've played around with painterly textures but not modelled anything from start to finish with that Warner Bros look in mind.

Anyway here are the renders.

Normal Mapping

2010-06-09T16:37:00.005+01:00

Finished getting the normal map sorted. Doesn't look too bad though I think I may add some extra geometry for the bumps around the base because they're a bit too big to get away with faking. The rest I'm quite happy with so here is a comparison.

low poly Model

High Polygon sculpt

Normals on the low poly.

Now whilst doing normals in this way is magical and you get great results it's worth remembering that rarely do you get a perfect result from the projection especially around tricky bits of geometry as such a lot of tweaking has to be done by hand in photoshop.

To illustrate the point here are the normal maps straight from the projection and the one which I have altered by hand.

before:

After:

winton lamp ready for projection

2010-06-08T19:33:00.010+01:00

well the whole model a day thing is working a bit better. Still not as fast as I'd like. I should get back to www.game-artist.net and do some speed modelling challenges.

Anyway here's the finished model. 2,300 tris, within my budget. Not too sure about the bumps that go round the lamp near the base a few times. if they don't look good as normals on flat geometry i'll model in some extra details.

anyway off for shattered horizon textures later.

comments and feedback welcome and encouraged

IGNORE ME!

2010-06-08T19:33:00.009+01:00

IGNORE ME!

Winton Lamp Post.

2010-06-08T12:13:00.003+01:00

Something I remarked upon my first day in the little part of Bournemouth we call Winton was the lamp posts.

They look old, older than they should be. Whilst they are fitted with modern lights and sensors, so they turn themselves on when it's dark enough, their design is almost alien in the sleek smooth curves of the iPod world we have built for ourselves and it's for this reason I think they are beautiful.

They are encrusted with layers and layers of flaking green paint with ancient yellows burst through like open wounds. Most of their lights struggle and flicker into life now and every night I go out I see more which lose this battle. As such newer boring replacements take their spots on the streets and fill what was once beautiful territory with cylindrical mediocrity.

They probably wont be here for that much longer and it'l be a shame when they're gone which is why I want to capture one now

Finished fence model.

2010-06-06T18:09:00.006+01:00

So after far too long a hiatus I've finished it all up now. I'm quite pleased with the result but as ever there are things I'd do differently should I do it again but that's what learning is all about.

Next I'm going to model one of those awesome lamp-posts you see around Winton and go for something a little more photo-realistic.

*edit* fixed the problem and added a wire-frame render.

Quick texture update

2010-06-05T13:29:00.003+01:00

I really need to get back to this whole game asset a day thing.

I was planning on getting the diffuse texture for this done today but Ricky invited me on a bike ride and I'm just to weak willed to refuse his boyish good looks.

So for now here is a quick render of the WIP texture. The big blocky wood-grain is just a place holder and I need to push some of the darks back a bit. I've gone for a painterly look again similar to the rock model. Next model I think I'll try my hand at the photo-realistic.

Showreel 2010

2010-06-04T15:06:00.002+01:00

I have had some good feedback concerning putting some modelling turntables in there and there are a few things I want to fix but for now whilst I work on my portfolio this shall be my showreel.

Animation Showreel 2010 V1 from Simon Ashbery on Vimeo.

rough showreel

2010-06-03T23:25:00.003+01:00

still grappling with premier so it's a little off atm (I have the res set to 1280 x 720 and the aspect ration set to 16:9 can't work out why it's all cramped up)

But the actual material is there. going to add music later.

Gate

2010-06-01T18:08:00.004+01:00

So things happened and I was unable to maintain my pace and produce a model a day model a day. In fact it's been about a week since I started this model and only just finished getting the normals off it.

I'm still learning Zbrush and as such my understanding of different tools remains limited. As such where I have attempted to model the joints in the wood I've created some irregular shapes. I think next time I attempt to create such a shape I will invest a little more time into the base mesh in Maya to get the shape I want, using Zbrush more for surface details then structural shapes.

Still such an issue is and was fixable in Photoshop.

I need to pick up the pace more if I want that job.

Next texturing.

Quick sculpt.

2010-05-24T12:01:00.002+01:00

my next model excitingly shall be a garden fence. Why all the seemingly boring stuff? Because as great as I think I am there are tons of people in industry who have been doing this a lot longer then I have and have put a lot more work in to get where they are.

A couple of years a go whilst suffering from first year fever I felt I was just plain badass at CG and would waltz into a job as a character modeller. Well three years of wisdom later I know now I have to put as much work as all these other people have to get where I want to be.

So here I am going back to my roots. I started modelling props when I was about 14 and that's where I will be starting in the industry.

Besides which I actually find doing to "everyday" stuff quite fun. It's a challenge to put character into an inanimate object.

Environment Modelling

2010-05-23T13:16:00.003+01:00

So I finished putting together this little prop. It's mostly been difficult learning a new work-flow, modelling in Zbrush exporting to Maya etc etc but I'm pretty happy with what I have here but It was just a test piece really. Now I have to really get into something meaty.

For the texturing phase I decided to go with something less photo realistic maybe more in the style of TF2. I think such stylisation was hampered by the highly detailed normal map but I still got some nice results. Now to churn out a ton more models and get me a job.

Modelling.

2010-05-20T15:03:00.004+01:00

Getting back to modelling. It's my strength and if I want a job I should play to it.

I put off learning Zbrush for a long time. It's a confusing program but an astoundingly powerful one.

So I've just whipped up a quick model. A stone arch. the normal map needs some tweaking and I am yet to texture it but I have seriously enjoyed the Zbrush process and look forward to improving my technique.

High polygon model, Sculpted in Zbrush imported to Maya.

Low polygon model, built around the Zbrush sculpt in Maya.

the low polygon model with normals applied. Some warping in areas but this can be fixed in photoshop. Next I intend to create a diffuse map and I may attempt porting it into Unreal 3.

Now i've gotten a basic grasp on this workflow I intend to create a lot more in the way of models over the next couple of months.

WIP Animation

2010-05-04T22:42:00.002+01:00

So after a talk with the nice man from Lionhead. I've decided to pretty much redo my entire lift animation. This is a WIP of the opening section. mostly just needs tweaking and adding some finer movement but mostly I like how it's come on.

In the next scene i intend to built the pace up a little until the third scene where there is a dramatic ending.

watch this space.

Texturing!

2010-03-25T12:55:00.008Z

So my main areas of expertise are certainly modelling and animation. I try to keep my skills practiced with as many aspects of the CG pipeline as i can, I enjoy getting outside my comfort zone and it's an empowering feeling to be able to produce every aspect of something yourself.

Normally though I confine this to my own work so I don't feel bad in the event of my output being sub-standard. So imagine my apprehension when Marc (the director of the grad film I'm working on) asked me to do some texturing for him.

The conversation went something like this:

In reality I was worried. If my abilities fell short in this instance I would be letting down Marc and the whole film rather than just myself, added to this pressure was the fact that Marc (who, I think it is fair to say, is a damn good painter) had already texture one of the assets and my work would have to match his standard.

My first reaction was the blub like a child but instead I soldiered on, I actually had quite a bit of fun painting the textures and they came out well. It took me back to my days of creating models for half life 2.

I think I shall do more texturing in the future:

The textures were created using a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting. We wanted aspects of realism in the materials we used on the machines but still maintaining the textured element of a hand painted texture.

I decided to use a grey scale bump map rather than an RGB normal map because of time constraints, besides nobody will ever see the ship close enough to tell the difference anyway.

-Ash

Jobs.

2010-03-11T23:49:00.003Z

Job's don't just happen to you. But it'd be nice if they did.

Good morning

2010-01-05T07:39:00.001Z

Lying on an unsuitable single bed. Last night's weather report on playback in my head. Brought to bare on reality by my brothers shout, "Mum's stuck. I get dressed run outside and say "fuck." The beauty of the fall fills my eyes but the stench of burnt rubber repulses me. I dig for too long, dismissing maternal help with claims of "i'm strong." Until eventually she escapes. The snow fills my hardwork, renderding it as useful as video tapes. I hope i can get home on friday because this snow may outlast the day.

2010

2010-01-01T11:46:00.003Z

The first foray into 2010 was magnificent. A naked moon illuminated the frozen night, whilst the sky was populated by floating light. Morning came an beauty remained, the Earth was clothed in frost again.

'Splosion and Corridors

2009-12-09T20:40:00.000Z

'Splosions and Corridors

Of all the formative moments of my years,
For every lesson real or fake.
There was always one constant.
That constant was Quake.

My passion was never easy.
I was accused of geek or nerd.
and these days the accusations are different.
"To like that old school shit is absurd."

But you can keep your recharging health bar.
Your modern warfare too.
Because I can bunny hop and rocket jump.
and quick save before do.

I have no need for reloads
And my armoury allows more then a pair
I don't want realistic AI squadmates.
for on my space marine's chest there is hair.

I'm a one man army, UNSTOPPABLE!
This is my personal fight.
and when i finally find the Makron
I'll crush him with my lone might.

But This victory here is special to me.
though i've completed many more games by now.
it was before gaming was popular.
When a game was personal and not just a cash cow.

So remember my friends as I do.
though i'm glad gaming became so big.
That once we only needed 'splosions and corridors
and that was enough for us to Dig.

-Ash

Police craft concept.

2009-10-18T18:05:00.002+01:00

I'm still trying to improve my painting skills. got a long way to go. especially mainting the clarity of forms after i've painted them. hence I cheated and just traced them in. Anyway. Going for a VTOL design with lots of brutalist sharpe forms.

Behold! The Fuhrer

2009-09-08T15:52:00.005+01:00

The sun is shining outside and the world finally seems to have been repopulated as I am reminded that I live next to a school. The kids are delighted to have finished their work for the day and so am I.

For the last week or so I have worked hard to finish a model I started ages a go but never got further then blocking out the torso.

It was originally intended to be an entry into this year Dominance War competition but I never got beyond designing the thing due to the work load at uni.

As part of my gearing up for the third year I decided it would be a good idea to get some Maya practice in and I saw no better way to do so than modelling this bad boy.

The design originally took a lot from insect physiology but over time changed to resemble those of us with endoskeletons.

The main design ethos however has been a HR Geiger inspired sexuality. This is supposed to be a nightmare creature and to this day I still think the Geiger's designs for the original Alien are the scariest monsters ever made and it made a point about the subtle and overt use of sexuality in the design.

The elongated head, the protruding mouth, The phallic objects erupting from its back. Even the reproduction method of a good ol' face rape all contribute, I feel, to its innate horror and the feeling of discomfort you feel just looking at it.

Granted the shock of the alien has been reduced as it is now a massively well known and established icon but i feel the theory is still sound. Although when considering HR Geiger in any sense it's worth remember he's a massive tosser.

To that end my design has enhanced sexual features. Once rigged I also wish the give the creature an extremely effeminate gait and pose.

The brief for the Dominance war also dictated that my design would be a cyborg. As a result I envisioned a robotic skeleton motivated and held together by organic muscles. I wanted the muscular structure to be recognisable but at the same time I needed it to look different, unique whilst avoiding it appearing as if I had tried to give it a human structure and just gotten it wrong.

This is the reason for the abdominal muscles and pectorals running down the back.

The first pass on the model finished. I intend to take the model into Mudbox or Zbrush and add some greater depth to the details. The high poly version will be for the normal maps as the finished version of this model I intend to be a low poly, game mesh. So I will be remodelling this again with a poly limit of about 10,000 tri's.

For now however I'm going to chill out and plan my next project, A set of test rigs for a transforming helicopter.

Test blog.

2009-09-07T12:22:00.000+01:00

Ok so I made a blog. now i'm going to get dressed and nip into uni

The Grinterloper

Pikachu just scared the balls off me.

Pikachu

Improved kadabra

Texturing.

Who's that pokemon?!?!?!?!

3D Sloop Illustration.

Learning to learn again.

In Soviet Russian art concept you.

Quick lunchtime sketch

Robots! What move and are textured.

ROBOTS!!!!

Stackopolis, REDUX, RELOADED, THE SEQUAL OF THE REMAKE OF THE ADAPTATION DELUX!!!!

Net Neutrality.

Sack RIG! (but only a test for now)

WIP Comic.

Cublicle

Train carriage.

Train Carriage Finished (kind of)

Train Carriage

The wait.

FINE!

Folio Pains!

Stone Arch Mk2

The Funk Mobile. MK 2

The Funk-Mobile MK II (teaser)

Making of the rifle

Finished Rifle.

Rifle Update

WIP Baker Rifle

WIP Baker rifle

Finished Lamp

Normal Mapping

winton lamp ready for projection

IGNORE ME!

Winton Lamp Post.

Finished fence model.

Quick texture update

Showreel 2010

rough showreel

Gate

Quick sculpt.

Environment Modelling

Modelling.

WIP Animation

Texturing!

Jobs.

Good morning

2010

'Splosion and Corridors

Police craft concept.

Behold! The Fuhrer

Test blog.