After the First Month.

So I have been at uni for near a month now, and have partaken in a few tiny projects to ease me into the course. Here they are:

10 second parallax animation exercise.

Much as the title suggests, this was a short exercise in creating depth within a 2D environment. I know this isn't strictly Game Design stuff, but just think about where traditional animations could come in handy with cutscenes, hand-drawn sprites etc. Not to mention the drawing skills you could acquire by drawing something so many times.

Here is the result of my animation work. Obviously it isn't focussing on anatomy or detail, but just the illusion of depth using parallax techniques.

Character Concepting.

The second project, this time closer to game design type stuff. I was to join with a partner and we were to create some character concepts for a hypothetical video game.

We took a simple idea of a not so distant-futuristic FPS, pretty generic and easy to start with.

Not really much to say on this, the lower half is my own work, the top half is partners.

Introduction to Maya
Yes, finally some 3D work. This time we were assigned (no group work this time) to conceptualise another object for our hypothetical game, and model it using Maya.

My head went straight to some older designs I had laying around, mostly of some rush units I half-designed a while back. After some idea throwing and doodling I came up with a dropship design I liked quite a bit, so I decided to get to work on it.

Having had plenty of 3D experience in the past, my main focus was getting used to the tools in Maya rather than re-learning topology techniques and such, and this dropship was the perfect opportunity to do it with.

This is the basic design work that went into the concept, the method was pretty simple. Start with sketchy thumbnails, work my way up to a final design and violla, I have a dropship.

And here is the final product.

Architectural Re-imagining
And now we're onto my current project, this time a 3-week project as opposed to the previous 1-week projects. I am to take an architectural form that has some significance to me, and re-design it in any way I like.

I took the windmill outside my house, and decided to fantasy-ise it. This is still the first weekend of the project so I havent much to show of it, but here is what currently exists:

Quick rough concept

Getting better with Maya now.

Well ta-ta till next time folks.

The First Steps

Now my usual routine before heading into a new thing (whether it a job, education or a holiday) is to thoroughly research it first, and in the case of this course, even start learning a few things before I get started.

Firstly came Maya. I've never used it, the interface and tools looked clunky to me. I was too used to the minimal interface found on Lightwave software so I just never tried it until I had to...of course now I have to. So I looked around for tutorials across the internet, references and tips, and found two rather fabulous books on the subject of modelling for game environments. I am currently reading through them both and theyre helping me immensely, starting from the basics and leading up to more advanced structures.

You can find them both on Amazon here:

http://amzn.to/oBH7WV

http://amzn.to/oYPiNF

Next up came learning the game engine I'd be using through the course, which happened to be Unity 3D ( http://unity3d.com/ ). Now as far as I know, there are no amazing books for this software, which meant I had to resort to online tutorials and quite a bit of messing around to figure everything out. I even had to go about learning some of its very own type of Javascript (which was just fine, I dont know the regular Javascript anyway).

So to put a long story short, I have learnt some of the basic parts of the game engine and modelling in Maya, at least enough to produce a simple game. Behold the screencaps of my efforts!

Welcome!

Welcome to the very beginning of my blog. Here you can follow my journey through Game Design and Visual Effects at Anglia Ruskin university over the next 3 years. Not only this, but my own personal game projects, such as test builds, previews, concepts and sketches will make their way here as well as personal tutorials, references and even my own learnings to impart upon you internet folk.

A brief background of my current skills upon entering this course: I see myself as moderately skilled in 3D modelling and javascript, and a pretty decent artist. But I wouldn't say I'm the best in the world, or even close (although I make a habit of trying to always be better than my classmates at these things). For a sample of my current skill level you can visit my DA page ( http://www.electronic-fox.deviantart.com ).

My hope is that through this blog, I can teach others what I have learnt over the following years, and see a difference in my own workflow and skills, perhaps to act as inspiration for others to learn their own skills. A big goal, I know. But I'll never know how this goes of I dont try!

Tata for now folks, till the next update!