Great news,

The colours on one of the videos has screwed up. Assassin's skin is blue. Desperately trying to fix it in Adobe Premiere.

So...

... Good thing I only did it in blocks, then. 

I could have recorded an 8 hour video that screwed up and effectively lost all of it.

Scaaaary stuff.

EDIT: Video is actually the right colour in Premiere. What?? Something is really messed up here. Any ideas?

Slow Weekend

I haven't done anything big specifically out of lesson these past couple of days. I did brush up on some art practise though. One one hand I really like doing it because I can learn really valuable new things that I can apply, but on the other I hate it because I feel dumb for not working it out myself.
For example, I learnt some new stuff about perspective. I was just thinking, "Why didn't I do that before? Why didn't I notice that this shouldn't be done in this way?" At least I know now, but I wish I was a little smarter and could work these things out for myself.

Anyway, I learnt about perspective, colours (Especially good considering Futures!), lineart and depth. Good stuff.

Right now I'm going to be doing some hardcore work on GDD because there's a big document coming up for it. I'll write more about it later!

Disregard

I don't have internet so I'm borrowing Jack's computer while he's away.

We pinned our Futures posters up yesterday. There was a big range of quality. Some were really well thought and out looked great, while others seemed a bit rushed. Like, there were a few that were missing taglines and some of them didn't really look like games.

I felt really queasy and I had to leave early. I've been so ill this year. Every time I start to get better, something else gets me. I hate it.

We had to give feedback on everyone's work. I'm no good at that sort of thing because I don't know if I'm saying something helpful, and I don't want to upset people if I say something bad.

I got some good feedback though. The general vibe I got was the the background looked too empty - so make the face bolder or put something else there - and make the screenshots bigger and more detailed. Sounds like good advice, and if we get to resubmit the posters I'll try to do it.

Yewnee

First day back yesterday. Wasn't too bad! I put 1920s on hiatus and started work on Western Fantasy. I feel more motivated now that I'm doing something new.

Jack and I gave Rhoda a bribe souvenier from Germany as a thanks for all the help. There was this stall in one of the markets that sold these nice little elf models, so we got her one. I got one for myself, and I love him. If I go back to Cologne, I'm going to get another. And another.
As many as I can.

I don't have internet at home for a few days as I had to take out the ethernet cable. There's a PAT tester or something coming over, I dunno. Landlord doesn't like the wires for some reason.

Today's Futures, and everyone seems to be itching for their results. I hope we get them today, and I really hope I did well.

I can't find my 1920s tank.

I'm so sure I did some work on it at home, but since it's not here I reeeeally hope it's at uni.

I don't see why I don't have it, considering I back things up a lot.

A lot.

So yeah.

I really wanted to have him and something else done this week, but by the looks of it that isn't happening. I'll just have to move onto something new if it isn't here.

EDIT: I see it on remote access but I can't get it. Annoying.

For the pinup

http://third-year-scribbles.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/concept%20art/honours

Just a quick way to look specifically at the work I've done for the module.
If I can, I'll hand this in with some printouts rather than printing everything (because I am poor D: )

I LOVE DESIGNING

So for my GDD, I was making enemies. I read this really cool story - supposedly true if you want to believe the witness - about some squealing creature with the footprints of a toddler that he nicknamed the Howler. Being a sucker for creepy stories, and with it being such a nice blank canvas I decided to use it as a starting point for an enemy.

Everything was going great, until several weeks later...

... I realise I've just drawn a Grey Child from Silent Hill 1.

Why is designing so hard?

How is it possible to very blatantly rip something off by accident??

So.

The Howler's going to need some really major work done.

Hmph.

So yeah. Read this awesome story. It really is very creepy (And I really hope it's true and not just a big fake).

A quick note

I won't be able to update this blog - or go on the internet in general - so much anymore as my landord believes, perhaps wrongly, that using an ethernet cable with the router will "steal all the gigabytes". Since the gigabyes are to be shared by everyone, I will have to go through the effort of buying a wireless adaptor, asking him for the real WEP key instead of the incorrect one we were told and at some point replace the ethernet cable he broke when he pulled it out while in our flat with no prior notice, and when we were out and unable to remedy the solution ourselves.

Not that I'm annoyed or anything.

Reworking the mechanics

I had some problems with my GDD in that the different tier abilities were too similar. I have found a way around this (I hope) and I've changed one of them.

At the moment, they are as follows:

TIER 1: High-jump/Glide

Similar to the common double-jump, Don can jump several times mid-air and then glide for a limited time. I'm thinking there could be a disadvantage to this, like being exposed to something in the air for too long while gliding will pull you wildly out of control and you'll have to land to be safe.

TIER 2: Gravity change

This one used to be inverting the level, but that would be both too similar to the high-jump in its advantages, and undoable outside. Now, Don can change the gravity, which moves loose objects in the desired direction, though it could hurt you. I think restoring gravity to normal would send all the objects back to their origins.

TIER 3: Corner jump

This needs a better name to describe what it is. Basically, there will be some corners, edges and walls that Don can fit through and travel to the other side. It takes time though, and it can leave him exposed to danger or send him hurtling into it if you don't know what's beyond you.

On a side note, I feel ever so paranoid when people look at the work I've pinned up. It's not dazzling and amazing like some of the stuff people have done and it makes me worry that people are laughing at me behind my back.

1920s Art

- Lots of straight lines - avoid round where possible
- Shading is thin or shallow - images look sort of flat
- Exaggerate thin limbs and blush in women
- Browns, golds, creams
- Thick arms in men that seem straight and almost consistent thickness
- Angular and jaunty creates strong male figures and tapered female figures
- ???
- I dunno
- I'm going to bed.

sdfsdf

I jsut found out Satoshi Kon - the guy who made Paprika and Paranoia Agent - died recently. I'm not a big anime fan, but I thought they were really good. It's kind of sad to hear that someone who made such beautiful things is gone.
There's so much rubbish out there, yet the person that has made this decent anime ends up dying.
Hm.

I think Futures is coming together nicely. We have to make posters for each topic that are divided into 4 groups: child past, child present, adult past and adult present. Child past is giving me the most trouble. I'm sure there's a lot on it, but it's hard to find pictures of it. Especially for things like nonverbal communication.

We had to do 2 pages of the pitch document for GDD too. I've done them but they're not printed. I tried to make these ones a lot lighter so they wouldn't come out dark.

Eh.

That's pretty much all the news.

Deco or Nouveau?

Yay for Rhoda! She's sorted out my passport stuff and now it's all mailed off! No more stress for a few weeks! Exciting.
She said she liked my Assassin pictures too. It made me feel good about them! When I get home I'm going to rewrite the text on it so it's more presentable. I found a lovely Deco style font to use.

On the topic of styles, I was wondering which movement to use - Art Deco or Art Nouveau - or if I could use a mix of the two. Obviously Art Deco was the one associated with the time, which suggests I should use that, but it's not like all the Art Nouveau stuff disappeared overnight.
On one hand, I think the swirly, flowy girlyness of Nouveau suits the Assassin. She'd have a lot of money, and I assume Nouveau trinkets were worth a lot after the war, so she'd like to splash out on expensive things like that.
But.
Would it be outdated? Though it was only a decade or two before, that's the equivalent of me wearing fluorescent parachute pants now. It'd look stupid. Not that I don't already
But maybe furniture goes out of style slower than clothes?

While Deco is nice, and would fit in, I wonder if it'd be a mishmash to combine it with Nouveau elements.

If I can only pick one, I'm leaning towards Deco, but I'd like some flowwy femininity in there too. I imagine the flapper look is partly a front - if only a little bit - and deep down she perhaps enjoys some retro elegance.

EDIT: After having a thorough look, I think she's going to stay mainly Deco. Though Nouveau is glamorous, I don't think it has enough 'edge' to suit her tastes. It's all a bit too demure.

First Hons pinup!

I did all my characters, scanned them in (Which induced much raging) and printed them off. Even with four pages on each sheet of paper, I had so many for pinning. As I heard someone aptly call it, there is a 'pin famine' in the class. There aren't enough. Warner was nice enough to lend me some, and I had to be stuper-stingy (Pinning 4 things with one pin often). I still feel like I used too many, but I do need them. I have 10 pages of work, which is more sheets than many people.
Not my fault, right?
...Right?

Anyway, with the pin famine, I didn't put up moodbaords. That'd be an extra 6 pages, and that would be outrageous. I have a ton of pictures though, so I'll pop them on the blog at some point just to show the sort of research I'm using.

Optimism!

I'm glad I started this blog because I've been getting some great feedback from people.

The tutors are all very helpful (Obviously). I sometimes feel like I'm pestering them way too much because I'm always shoving sketchbooks in faces and mithering them for advice. I guess it's better than just assuming what to do and getting on with it alone...
... Right?
Katy and Jonny have both given me some useful tips for my problems with Eastern Fantasy. They've made me feel like I get it better, and which sort of themes I should be looking towards for inspiration.
I always get Jack to check over my scribbles to see if I'm heading in the right direction.
Rich sent me this link that is exactly the way I feel about my sexy-female-characters rant. He's phrased it way better than I did.
It's worth watching!

Back to work with GDD proposal. So far I've done a mood board, but I'm not entirely sure what the writing/picture ratio should be. Is it meant to be quite descriptive or more concept-artsy? Should it be flashy with nice backgrounds and things, or does that come later?
I think I'm doing too much Honours compared with GDD and Futures. I find it hard not to get caught up in it, what with it being bigger than any other project like it that I've done. I did a couple more characters today but I can't be bothered to upload these yet; the batteries I have are so bad that I can only take a few pictures with the camera before it eats them.

Art Dump and Slow Internet

Apparently, someone in this block needs to be downloading something huge all the time, lest he face some sort of severe consequences such as the death penalty. I suspect he's using torrents because they seem to get some sort of priority. Because of this, I have the sheer joy of being unable to do so much as view images on Google without having to wait a good 15 minutes for the pictures to load. Because of this, I can't do research outside of uni.

Hooray.

On a lighter note, here are some concept sketches, just to show that I am in fact doing something while waiting 10 minutes for the "New Post" page to load, or to see a picture, or instead of effing and jeffing in Left 4 Dead 2 because Versus Survival is finally out again but I keep getting disconnected every few seconds so I can't enjoy it.
But I'm not bitter about that or anything.

So, we have:

Evil Modern War Civilian

Good 1920s Assassin

Good 1920s Range

? Eastern Fantasy Tank

Evil Horror Support

Neutral Punk Soldier

Success!

I made a sticky post (Except not really, I cheated and just set it in the future) so that if you want to just see work from a particular area, you can follow a link and it'll take you to all of them. Neat, eh? I worked it out myself!


From now on, I'll also be colour coding modules. I couldn't think of a better way to do it and this seems good enough. All GDD text will be red, all Honours will be green and all Futures will be blue. Remember that!

Reformat

I will be talking about my Futures a bit later and hopefully can do an Honours concept art upload extravaganza, but I'm just quickly going to try to rearrange this blog. I was speaking to my sister about it and she said it can be hard knowing which project's which. I want to find a way to have a sticky post or something similar at the top with links to specific big tags (i.e. Honours, GDD, Futures). I also want to have maybe a header on posts with the main tags there. This might be a lot of effort, but if I can do it, it'll help the clarity looooads.

I also need to change the images on it at some point. I don't like using someone else's stuff, even if it is freely available.

Eastern Fantasy vs Western Fantasy

I bumped into a design-based hurdle yesterday when I was working on my Honours yesterday. I was working on an Eastern Fantasy tank when I really began thinking about the difference between Eastern and Western fantasy. When I struggled to objectively categorise them, I considered just compiling them both into fantasy. However, that wouldn't be right because, though I can't put my finger on it, there is a difference. Lord of the Rings and Final Fantasy are very distinctly different.

But how?

I came up with a few ideas, but none of them could be considered definite differences. There was always an exception.

1) Mythology

Western tends to use creatures that have never really been thought to exist, such as orcs and elves (A lot of things like this bother me because they're clearly someone else's reused ideas). Eastern has dragons and chi and things like that.

But this instantly falls through when you consider Gandalf and Harry Potter. These are big characters, and back in the day people did think witchcraft was real. So there is real life influencing it. Also, knights definitely existed, and dragons were rumoured to. So they do take some 'real' elements.

As well as this, Eastern Fantasy is not all about mythology. Take Dragonball as an example. Sure, it's based around Journey To The West, but I'm sure stretchy alien Piccolo and pink rubbery villain Buu were not part of that.

2) Abilities

Maybe it's just the style of powers used. West is swords and bows, East is magical powers. Right?

Well, no. Wizards use magical powers (Though they are less common in the West), and many characters in East have some sort of weaponry.

3) Beauty

 I read a good article about a similar point ( www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node733 ), though it was about the 'cuteness' of the East. I was thinking about it more in terms of the elegance of the East, in the way that nothing is particularly ugly. For example, an orc in the West is very ugly. Compare that to the droves of cutesy little anime girls that may be seen in the East.

Basically, West has more grit and East has more elegance.

But the article brings up Disney films in it, and I think this goes against the point I believed. The Little Mermaid portrays a pretty and cute heroine with an attractive love interest. Other characters may be less attractive, but the main ones are what I'd expect from the East. However, I guess a difference is that hero Eric is a strong, beefy man compared to cutesy little Tidus from Final Fantasy...

... But compare and contrast superhero Goku from Dragonball. He is absolutely not the elegant, slender stereotype I believed.

4) Colour

This is the closest I think I may have come. West is earthy greens and browns, East is pastels and bright colours. I suppose in this way, West can be thought of as more 'foresty', whereas East is sort of 'spacey'. Though East can also be set in an old-timey environment like West often does, the clothes are frequently bizarre and bright.

Obviously there are exceptions.

5) Art style

East is anime-children, West is busty women? East is pretty beasts, West is hideous trolls?

I don't know.

I give up.

All I can guess is that these are some criteria, and each genre can pick and choose between a couple. They may tend to lean in one direction, but could perhaps not stick to every cliché.

I just don't know.

baw

Any point coming in other days?

This is the second day I've been in class outside of when our year has to be, but I'm not seeing much reason to. I mean, I'd like to say I feel like I'm using my time well and whatnot, but on Wednesday I didn't see any tutors, and today I still don't see any but I am potentially depriving second years of a computer. I don't know how Bambaloo Guy did it. I don't want to be a pain, and it seems like I might be one for no good reason.

It seems that there's more point just staying at home.

Proposals

Well, I went into lesson with Jack yesterday, and it was dead. Not even quiet. Just... dead. There was one other person there, and apparently he was from MA. I honestly thought someone else would turn up.
I might not come in Wednesdays so often because there were no tutors around, so I couldn't really ask for help. I'd rather come in on a day when they're available.

Today has been more about GDD, but Rhoda was nice enough to check my honours anyway. She showed me some links to artists in regards to body shapes and sizes. The pictures were so good. Makes me jealous.

Hmph.

Must remember to bring headphones to lessons as well. There is some, uh. Slightly distracting raucus laughing.

As for the GDD, though I had my heart set on the one I'd been planning over Summer, we had to jot down 3. At first I struggled, but I came up with two other ideas that I actually think are okay. I might implement some features if they have a place.

The first one is ViDys, obviously.

The second one's a game about mythical creatures that's really simple and preferably without any dialogue. They all have individual abilitiesand you have to switch between them to solve puzzles - for example, a tsuchinoko could roll, a griffin could glide, etc.

The last one is about glitches. I love glitches, so I thought it might be fun to make a game where it was either presented in a way that seemed like it was glitching, or certain areas that were purposefully shoddily made that can be breached, with them being the only way to get through the level.

Now I just need to pester a tutor apparently, durr.