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?
06/05/2011
Texturing.
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?
05/05/2011
Who's that pokemon?!?!?!?!
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.
04/05/2011
3D Sloop Illustration.
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.
18/04/2011
Learning to learn again.
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.
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.
30/03/2011
In Soviet Russian art concept you.
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.
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.
10/02/2011
Quick lunchtime sketch
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.
14/12/2010
Robots! What move and are textured.
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.
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.
03/12/2010
ROBOTS!!!!
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.
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.
19/11/2010
Stackopolis, REDUX, RELOADED, THE SEQUAL OF THE REMAKE OF THE ADAPTATION DELUX!!!!
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
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
17/11/2010
Net Neutrality.
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
"
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
"
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