FMP brief status report...

Right so after much negotiation of time, the final date for my visit to good Ole Landon is tomorrow and i anticipate quite a rush in the completion of assets shortly after seeing as i have quite a lot of models that require the photo textures i will acquire. I also need to refine some details that i missed first time around when i wasn't entirely sure what i was doing. Well this blogs going to be fairly short it seems as their isn't really much more to say at the moment besides progress is at least reasonably steady.. Any who back to trawling through the list which looks like this at the moment.

Final Major Pain in the.....

I never expected the final major to be an easy project it would have be silly of me to make such presumptions i do feel though maybe i underestimated the scale of job i have given myself. The more and more i look at the photos i have gathered, the more assets i find and id love to do them all but sadly this seems less and less likely. The reason is mostly due to my own personal time constrictions, i believe if i wasn't working then i would have been much further ahead by now in this project as in principle this should be a breeze.. Anyone who ever thinks lecturers in colleges or universities sit on their asses all day telling students what to do is sadly mistake after the month I've had believe me when i say its seriously bloody difficult..

So what have i done so far? well I've been mostly working on big assets and trying to pad the level out but i have made probably 20% of the small assets as well. Many require textures but the ones that are untextured are left that way because i am waiting to take photos of the originals in the war museum to use for textures. Much like the rooftop project i am again adopting the attitude of only using effects where neccessary to bring the level to life, in contrast to others who use them merely to cover up poor work.At first i was really looking forward to this project but i feel now the excitement is slowly dindling away as pressure is put on, naturally this is a tough titties scenario as that is how the real world works. I am hoping that the flame is reignited next week when i visit and i actually get behind the glass screen to get up close the historical pieces in fact i am getting pretty excited thinking about it so im sure that will work.

Im not going to go on to much more about my FMP for now as i dont want to share my ideas with others but hopefully if all goes to plan ill have a nice piece to add to my portfolio by the end of it ^_^.

Sony NGP... Two words Words! Splat Pants

I never thought any time in the near future I'd see console graphics hit the handheld market, at least i never expected it to be on the scale that Sony have managed! It has been some time since i have been genuinely excited about a handheld, in fact i cant remember the last time but this console has all the bells and whistles making it far superior to anything on the market or that is going to be on the market for the next year.

Here's the specs if you haven't seen them already.
Sony NGP Specs

After watching the tech demo conference where they featured the NGP running uncharted at an incredibly smooth frame rate it has not started making me ponder, I have always thought of the gaming world in the same terms as the evolution of the television and when relating it to that until now i have always thought of games being in the black and white era but i believe now since handhelds have caught up this must mean because of our human nature to always strife for progression i predict home consoles in the next few year are going to make a leap beyond what any of us can perceive as they make the leap from the black and white period to what i guess is hypothetically the colour era.

Now back to the Sony NGP, of course Nintendo has ruled the market for handhelds for 2 decades now and I'm fairly sure they fancied a 3rd. Unfortunately for Nintendo i think they are about to take a dive in profits! I cannot personally see people going for the 3DS, my reasons for this are simple really. Nintendos main market is the casual market and most people i know own a DS, even my mum! However i cannot see people like my mum going for the hype of the 3DS over the cheaper standard version. Nintendo have always been about innovation and gimicness and i admire that and for the most part this has provided them with much success but i fear now this is no longer enough for the Serious gaming market and perhaps to much for the casual gaming market this is where Sonys window of opportunity opens up!

In classic Sony fashion they have analysed their competitors, stole the technology only then to vamp it up to being 10 times better and cramming it into a object that is no bigger than its predecessor. Thought the complexity of this machine may still not appeal to the casual market it will definitely be in the Christmas stockings of every Girl, Boy, Man and Woman who has a serious passion for games.

Now what begs the question is what happens next for Nintendo? when they fell in this situation after the fail of the gamecube they cam up with Wii and revolutionised gaming which makes me extremely anxious to see how they react to the NGP. Maybe Nintendo will play the cheap and cheerful card? That's the only way i can see the 3DS being a success who knows either way all i know is that this year is going to be a very interesting year for the video games industry.

Is new MotionScan technology the beginning of the end for Animators and character artists alike?

Now obviously if you haven't seen the MotionScan technology here is a link for it and i recommend watching it because its quite an interesting watch.


It is fair to say that with this its not just about character animators its also about character modellers, this new bit of technology is fantastic and no animator could ever match the level of realism it produces and the same applys for modellers, it has took games to a proper cinematic level. It is no longer the case that the actors hired are just voice actors to sort of recognisable 3D sprites, now the actor has to do the same job that they do in TV programmes and movies by actually doing a full performance.

I do think 'LA Noire' will become a bench mark for future games as it looks incredibly impressive, i do however think the technology needs some work but not so much the MotionScan tech but more the old tat Motion Capture tech. My reasons for saying this are the heads look so good that its actually making the old fashioned motion capture that is used on the body look really dated and its devaluing it, for example, 2.44 on the clip the detective pulls out a gun but it looks incredibly dodgy and jittery in comparison to the smooth movement of the head.

Now do i honestly think that this is the beginning of the end for character artists and animators? Well no not really at least not fully, sure with the technology there to create such incredible likeness's of the head its only a matter of time before this is combined fully with motion capture and extends to the rest of the body, but there will always be a need for character artists as not all characters are human or based on realism and of course these will need to be animating. Further more this could be a blessing in disguise after all animators can put their focus on making the other aspects of the game seem more real such as environment animation or animal animation.

Overall I'm just glad to see the industry is still striving in the pursuit for ever more realism and from a gamers standpoint this is awesome but from a game artists point of view i imagine this is a scary prospect after all as the limitation get lower and lower, the level of expectation goes the other way but i suppose like myself this also seems exciting as what would be the point in being an artist if you didn't want to strife for realism.

Fingers crossed.... time to jump the nest

Just applied for the Blitz open day though Ive worked in the industry i only worked for a small company with 12 to a team i would love to see blitz's operation with far bigger teams at work. I opted to send my Wallace and Gromit vehicle to them in the end, after the response i got from Heather id have been daft not to.

So apart from seeing Blitz's teams in action what are my other reasons for wanting to go? Well i guess the main reason everyone else is trying too, to get some outside of uni professional criticism from a company that is well established. The fact it is only 10 minutes down the road has nothing to do with it at all lol! If i get in id be pretty chuffed at just making it that far it would at least tell me that they think i have the potential to make it into a company of that stature not that im knocking Supersonic Software! I loved my time there and they have been around as long as Blitz but havent had the same fortune expansion wise.

I haven't really discussed my ambitions really but i think now seems appropriate. My really urge is to teach, Ive wanted to do this since back in college and everything i did till the point i got here at uni was to push towards that and I'm happy to announce that i got a job last month starting tomorrow as a sessional lecturer for a few days a week still giving me plenty of time to do my FMP ( mostly due to the fact i don't really sleep more than 2 hours a night!).

In my new responsibilities as a sessional lecturer i will be covering 7 units overall broke down into 4 sections 3D environments, Computer Game Engines, Production Management and Working to a brief all of this of course i have done and by now there is no excuse if it is under par.

Accidentally the Guru scheme has given me quite a good start towards building my confidence to do this as i stated before in a previous blog, i really did enjoy doing it and its only because of this job that i wont be doing it if it continues this term as well. Between this and the Group project last year Ive realised i have developed new characteristics taking on responsibilities and always trying to be at the helm where organisation is concerned. These have moved me away from the immature prat i was in first year towards something which i hope is far more professional.

Beyond this though i do have a further ambition and that is to work for my dream company, Rare. This desire has manifested from being a big fan of their games and stylisation. So this is my next goal after 5 years of teaching i hope to look to returning to the industry in the meantime while teaching naturally i will improve my skills taking freelance work on the side to keep my foot in the door.

I think this is a realistic goal for sure, but i have unrealistic ambitions too im one of these types of people who if i was a bird the moment i was born id have gone right todays the day by the end of the day im flying out of here...An example of one of my unlikely ambitions is one that i am planning on giving a go straight after university. It is to create a RTS based game in Unreal using Unreal script to write the framework there are already open source ones in progress and i hope to contribute to this in the near future. Of course i could never manage this alone within a feasible time at least and that's where the plan falls short at the moment with only a few people interested but it wont stop me giving it a shot.

I recently met my old school form tutor funny enough and he labeled me as a grafter i never really thought of my self as this and I'm still not sure if that's really true i don't remember ever working particular hard in school haha but i suppose it was a nice compliment none the less and if it is true i hope it still stands.

The FMP! I am extremely looking forward to this as i dig the world war era not because it had guns and fighting but for the more subtle things in the environments. Manufacturing in the era was beautiful everything had a touch of quality to it that you don't get today. For example the brass toggle light switches! none of that cheap plastic tat you get today imported from china this is to most people just a device that performs two functions, off and on... But to me this is brilliant to look at and in the area i chose rather ingeniously someone tweaked one to act as a cigarette lighter. Yes i am that easily pleased!

Well i think i have babled on a bit to much in this blog but hope everyone had a happy christmas and a great new year. now in the words of JG Holland "God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest." spot on there Mr Holland.

Back to the 3DTV's : the final opinion

I can now properly pass judgement on 3D televisions, because i purchased one just before Christmas ha ha!

Yes it was rather and impulse buy but one that i don't actually regret surprisingly. In a previous blog entry "To 3D or not 3D that is the question" i did slate 3DTVs a bit and yes some of the points i made still stand but i can clarify all those points now.

The first is are 3DTV's as pointless as i first made out, well in fact no... I admit i made a bit of a misjudgement about them but granted it wasnt until i took a chance on buying one that i realised this. You get a far better experience on a 3DTV than you do in a standard cinema. Places like Showcase and the Odeon branches whip out substandard 3D movies ( of which i am talking about those that are not designed to be in 3D) and it generates a negative reception towards films and the 3D technology. It wasn't till i visited the IMAX cinema to watch Toy Story 3 that i realised the potential for 3D in media and especially in the field of video games.

Yes it has a long way to go but the picture quality on the TV's is fantastic and the added feature of being able to turn 2D into 3D is far more effective than that used in normal cinemas which just confirms that to them its all about the dough and not the customers (no surprises there no doubt).

In my last blog i had a crack at the glasses and in part that still stands but to clear up a few things they are not as bad as first perceived. In comparison to normal cinema ones they are quite comfortable, so much so i spent 5 hours and had no troubles what so ever. This doesn't obviously apply to everyone some people do get discomfort around the ears, eye strain and dizziness it depends on the person but that's just hard luck.

The glasses do fit comfortably over normal glasses quite snugly to my surprise but i stick by what i said that the sooner 3D glasses are gone the better mostly due to the expense of them at £59.99 a pop for a non rechargeable pair. Companies are working on 3DTV minus the glasses and in fact have some in production but they are to small in size to take off commercially over here in the UK or in the US.

The final issue they seem to have sussed with 3D telly's is how they are made everything dark before, they have fixed this by attaching light sensors that adjust the glasses tint to the conditions of the room. Sometimes this works great other times its a bit dodgy due to light from the screen, but either way its on the right track.

One major plus i have for 3D is as mentioned before with video games. I was playing COD earlier and couldn't get over how much depth it gave the game it was fantastic and can only get better so there is lots of room for improvement.

So overall it now seems more promising than it previously did...

The First Semester - Brief project reflection

Well end of the first semester and what better time to reflect on the 2 projects we were assigned than now.

The first project being the rooftop, my initial reaction to the brief was quite shocked. 20,000 triangles was a tight budget so realistically i should have gone for a format that was better suited to such a low amount like Wii or psp but nooo i thought 'ah what the hell make it Xbox 360 it will be a nice challenge'... I can tell you know that it really really was.

The first obstacle i hit was the piping as i knew this would take up allot of valuable triangles, so i addressed it by using a Lego style system and creating higher poly ends for the pipes to give the impression that the rest of them were allot rounder than they are. Even with this the sheer amount of piping on the rooftop was to much so i did have to make alterations from the reference just so it would make some sense.



I had other issues and had to try my best to get
the assets the lowest i could and bake the detail on. One of the biggest problems i had was the dam water pumps which you can see in the the picture the left. Other than this everything else was relatively straight forward, sure it all needed to be monitored but for the most part it was a breeze.

This still isn't 100% finished as i need to add some polishing touches such as fixing seams and adding some decals which i have factored into my texture budget but its almost there

.
The second project was a choice between doing either a sculpt or a vehicle of your choice. Id already been playing around with Zbrush previously and had made a sculpt of Winston Churchill's head so i was more or less fed up of that sort so i chose to make a vehicle. But that wasn't the only reason! I also knew that it was pretty much to me like kryptonite was to superman! I hated modelling cars and planes it just really was my thing so i thought what better way to improve than by taking a gamble on my grades.

If i struggled id have got a bad grade in what is a very important year, this pushed me to better myself in this area and to succeed i needed to make something that i knew i would enjoy making and at first i chose the Honda Civic because its my favourite car and overall its a bit weird, that was until i seen what Amy was doing and from the moment i seen the Wallace and Gromit bike i thought wow what an awesome idea so with her permission i stole the idea but instead made their car.

Amy had a fantastic book which was really a joke book as it was the Haynes manual for Wallace's inventions but it had everything in it that i needed. The budget was 9000 which i actually thought was bang on to create something really nice yet sensible and enough that i could actually try and do the car justice.

So the car is more or less finished just a few polishing bits, the destroyed one is still in the shop having work done but its not far off i guess here's a screenshot of it in unreal. I plan on putting the hierarchy in it over the next week or so so it will be drivable in time for hand in :-).

All i can say is i have thoroughly enjoyed this project and it picked me up from a bout of depression due to the rooftop ha, so all good. The final count for this was 8999 tris so i used almost every triangle to get the best shape i could.

First Blog of Third Year...

Right so first blog of the year and better late than never..

So i don't know how people are managing so far but I personally think this third year is harder for time than the second year was. Annoyingly this is my own time keeping fail and it seems no sleep is the only answer to my problem.

I must say though the highlight of the year so far has been this guruing experience. Not only does this benefit the first years by giving them knowledge we have gained and from a different point of view than Heathers, but it also gives a nice amount of tutoring experience to us as well. On top of all the it also gives the lecturers a better idea of who's got the passion to proceed onwards to year 2.

As I'm sure most of you have seen it's fairly predictable by now who won't be coming back next year from year 1 these are the students who no matter how much you try to help them either they wont truly embrace it or dismiss the fact they need help to begin with when clearly there work suggests otherwise.

This is a great insight into Heather, Chris's and mikes constant yearly battles to get the best out of the students. From this I feel I have grown rather (not by much but enough) as it has made me take a major look at myself and increased my confidence in my own abilities.

So, looking forward to the rest of my final year and though it won't be easy with what I guess is a rather ambitious project it still will be interesting, stressful and hopefully on the rare occasion enjoyable haha.

SO CA-MORON IS NEW PM

Arg why not Clegg or even Brown again... Sure brown looked like a half melted candle but he knew his stuff and the better choice over this toff any day.

Well i think the picture pretty much speaks for itself really on where i stand in this election business my only regret is leaving it this late to bitch about it. Right so where to start, ok first thing is all you people with brains the size of a small rotten peach you are all fools for voting for this man. Right first part over. Second part has everyone here in the UK that desperate or has the Tory's developed some magical device that makes everyone forget about the crap this country went through during the 80's and 90's because of this bunch of blue morons?

Those believing that they can turn this country round you are all so misinformed the Conservatives will suck all the lower classes dry in an anti robin hood manor. An example Ive been throwing about is this mansion tax that the Tory's are lowering yet they are getting rid of valuable child tax credits which many working mums on low pay rely on it. He wants to cut back police and the fire service as well as the NHS.. how on earth can this benefit us especially where crimes concerned as its at an all time low. its daylight robbery from the poorer communities in this country.

Another bitch is those silly live debates.. for god sake please bring it down to just one of them the people in this country have attention spans that cant be measured by and form of clock in existence. Further more it was more a competition of who was the best lier and its quite obvious who came out top trump in the voters eyes.

I'm hoping that Lib Dem's will be the ying to their yang and balance things out however overall i do predict a fail and cant see this lasting long which will probably lead to another election but meh its win win either Cameron will hang himself or he will turn out to be the best prime minister ever.. i think i know which one it will most likely be and I'm happy to watch the political game of hangman unfold :)

Ooo one last thing all those people who moaned about the fact that eastenders was cancelled because of the news get your prioritys right!! Its probably people like you that and got us into this mess! it gets me so mad im gonna stop now before i go into a frenzy oh but this isnt the last of this!!!

Join me at WARPED OUT ENTERTAINMENT

Summary for the year now lets go grab a beer :)

Yup this is it the end of the year.. well almost!
Its the end of assessments for this uni year and i cant help but feel happy at the progress i have made this year. Yes my work may not be in huge quantity's but theres no denying there has been an improvement especially in visual design.

I have started to enjoy visual design this year especially when it comes to life drawing and location drawing and I'm hoping this will carry on over the summer and into next year when hopefully i will have advanced even further in what is by far my weakest subject.

Well the group project I'm very happy with the results that were produced we all worked extremely hard on the level that was on a very very ambitious scale. Its not been easy for anyone I'm lucky i have experience with game engines which gave me a small advantage, but everyone else in my group had never seen their models in a real 3d game environment and with me being techy this made everything for me that bit more interesting as i put in aspects of what i have learned in the past into this project.

I feel very fortunate to have worked with the people i did as i cant knock the dedication that was given. Without it this project would not have succeeded further more i was quite glad we were all thinking on the same wavelength its a key skill to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.

I really must say that Unreal is much easier to work with than the Renderware engine it is one fantastic piece of kit indeed.This experience has given me a much deeper insight to how engines function and has given me a much clearer vision as to how generous i can be with my triangle counts. It also took me back to the basics and polished off those skills such as simple things like pivot points and organising work in a nice clean manor.

I guess the big question is would i work in a group again next year.. and i have to say yes i would!

Another year another rant

Well it's creeping up closer and closer that dreaded time of year again when everyones blood boils from pressure due to one of the worst human conditions, of course what I am talking about is stress.
 
It's a fail or succeed world that we pitifully exist on and only those with the passion and drive to better themselves constantly will succeed in it.
 
There are those who take the ice road where few will make it across to the green grass while the others drown in their sorrows wishing they had done something with their pathetic lives.

I realised that I was one of those on ice blissfully unaware of how thin it really was! I decided that's not the route for me. So ask yourself is it really the route for you? If so you'll need this number when the ice cracks 020 8700 7007... Wow what a rant

Moan of the week... the Nintendo DSi XL!!!

Wow Nintendo welldone for just pissing off every DSi owner out there! Im pretty sure the scene is pretty similar to that of telling the chub club the annual all you can eat buffet is cancelled.. Yup as they did with several of the gameboy models Nintendo have gone and released a new model of their current DS range. Its completely the same as the old only with a bigger screen. Nintendo really should plan earlier i know think ill wait a good three months before buying anything from Nintendo.. Stupid Nintendo now my friend is stuck squinting because of you barstools granted hes chinese (no offence tom) but still thats no excuse...

On the plus side the screen size does make the DS more desirable still wish they would upgrade the hardware though..

The Nintendo DSi XL is out on 5th March in Europe and probably will be closely followed by DSi XXL in June!

nintendo usage count = 6

To 3D or not 3D that is the question??? (contains mild passionate swearing)

Do you really want to look like this guy the last chicken in the shop?

So they are all saying that 3D TV is the next big thing, there’s always some next big thing.. Why isn’t there any next small or medium things? mehh is the answer because it simply has to be. personally i don’t think 3DTV will save the television and its only a matter of time before some weirdo that exceeds my own wierdness and has some musical talent besides the armpit bagpipes or the butt trumpet to come along and make some stupid song like “PC killed the Television lolz”.

I mean maybe its just me but just from my cinema experience’s with 3d i cannot personally stand wearing those stupid glasses that make everything dark and do fuck all if you have the light on or even off sometimes. Not to mention anything short of 20/20 vision renders these things useless and sure you can get glasses that fit over glasses but ive seen people in the cinema wear them and they look such twats!To the degree you may as well stick a pipe in their mouth and called them Gerald (i don’t see the connection either but go along with it) so wearing contacts is the only way out of that fiasco. Now if they somehow develop a way of getting the same effect without putting on those glasses then ill be impressed but for now all they are doing is putting leeches on a dieing peasant. Stupid Victorians

Further thought how many glasses for these TVs are you expected to own? Just in case any of your chav/redneck/gypsy mates 8 kids want to watch something. I’m afraid you sir will have to settle for blurred TV or send the little shits home via use of slingshot! I know what id choose.

“little shits always coming round h….. ” Stupid inner monologue

Wheres Bernards watch when you need it

Recognise this image?? seen this sort of epic messiness before? is it a photo of your office? if it please don't post it on the net nobodies interested in your failings. To the blog yes hello again I'm here to mildly entertain while at the same time boring you with the most amount of bollocks i can spew out about this magical and wondrous topic we all love call... ohhh its time management *puts away party poppers*.

Time is precious, for those of you confused by the title you either had no childhood or you were not sad enough to watch it in the first place either way this daft looking kid was possibly the best time keeper of all time unfortunately he is not you! Not to rain on your parade or anything... Any who none of that matters this blog is topical and i will try my best to keep it that way.

So the topic well Bernard's watch stopped time and there is not one person who could no really do with it as there never seems to be enough hours in the day these days.

Time management is a skill at the end of the day. It does require techniques to master it and id go as far as saying that time management is possibly the most challenging aspect of uni life it cannot be spoon fed as it revolves around your lifestyle and you have to self direct it taking several key factors in to mind that allow for maximum productivity and that's what i plan on discussing.

So the first key factor is the obvious one 'Organisation'!! Without being organised then its completely pointless even thinking about time management as this magical factor is the key to getting those extra hours playing Call of Duty or getting drunk you know whatever floats boat and tickles your pickle. So to get organised well its actually the easiest to do but the hardest to keep in my opinion, it is really all down to how slobbish you are as this comes naturally to neat freaks as i like to call them. Having all your work categorised and easily accessible immediately saves time as it prevents the annoying thumbling around desperately searching for that one important document or whatever it may be in a sea chaos that wastes unnecessary time.

Once over that road block its to the number one killer when it comes to time management, this is of course distractions! We all know this one is hard especially with game art students as there is a tendency to be an attraction to boycott work in favour of game playing shenanigans and yes probably with the mentality of if its time enjoyed then its not time wasted. To get past that its quite difficult and needs allot of will power. This will power is the second key to efficiency and maximum productivity. The best way to get over this is to make sure that days are planned out with a fair share of breaks where these activity's can be done, though naturally sometimes things interrupt plans and everything goes a bit pear shaped and this cannot be helped but it does not warrant a panic.

When it comes to arranging and sorting out how to organise your day in a readable manor it really depends on what tools you have to display it. With allot of phones these days heading in the personal organiser direction it gives that option of not using old fashioned paper to organise as obviously its more portable than your average sketchpad. However if you are a broke ass student and living only marginally better than your bog standard pikey then naturally the sketchpad may be the better choice.

As you can see above i have posted my timetable for a few weeks ago thanks to the magic that is the picture button. Now yes it is the old fashioned way of doing it with paper and no I'm not quite a pikey but anyways i just find this method the better of the two for me as my phone plays up like a trouble child on crack. To the point, I'm not saying you should lay yours out like this but it just to give you an idea. When making a timetable it is crucial to consider priority especially if it involves deadlines and this priority is the third key factor of time management.

Fortunately between the time of me writing the above and writing this i have created a tool for creating timetables and printing them and yes sure i could have deleted the text above or rewritten it but for some reason i have a fear of the delete button probably due to me deleting several important work documents on my friends fathers computer when i was younger i soon associated that button with clip around the ear. Its been made with game art in mind and contains a preset system that is fully customisable. Yes it looks a little ugly at the moment but i was thinking printing efficiency before remember that most people don't care ha. So i will pretty it up soon with a more fancy template.


http://www.warpedoutentertainment.co.uk/images/timetable.swf
This brings me onto tools. As with this little program i have made tools can help save time and organise out your week with ease and the easier this process is made the more efficient a person can be with their time and tasks.

Tools are handy for what ever job you have to complete and researching new tools is well worth the extra time as they can benefit you in the long run and often produce better results in half the time. For example i recently spent 2 nights drilling all of zbrush's and cs4's features into my head and sure this effected my timetable, in fact its made it so i have not completed a task in time but now that extra knowledge will help me produce much better work. So taking that time out is immensely worth wild.

To skip back a while before i went off on this tangent i was about to discuss the third key factor this of course being priority.. Now i know your not thick but i still have to write about this. Prioritising work is extremely important. You don't want to spend time on something that isn't necessary straight away so sometimes its best to get it done in the order it was first set! Naturally though ability can play its part in disturbing this because not everyone is good at everything and to achieve the level of others in a subject it may take more time but this is usually balanced out by another subject being easier to handle, so this is the fall back subject and probably gets left till last.

This could also work the other way around of course meaning that the easy one is out of the way first relieving some pressure and allowing focus to be concentrated on just the hard topic (oh no I have gone cross eyed!)

So the main 3 factors to remember when it comes to time management are Organise,Prioritise and Will power and though i didn't write this blog in that order this is the order it should be in but my main issue which i need to work on is organise :) and apart from this blog this is also reflected in my messy sketchbook. As you can also see i have posted a picture left illustrating it in a way that gamers should find visually appeasing. So we all have things we need to work on and now is the time to sort it out before it gets to much and our heads explode or worse!!!

Oh yes while on the matter of heads exploding there is one more thing! When using time management to arrange your life please please please dont forget your 'you time'!! It is extremely important to relax as a 'burn out' can end with you further behind on work or complete mental collapse which of course nobody wants! So yes dont overwork, be sensible with time!

Right and that's the end of another mind blowing blog entry by me if it didn't have the desired effect and blow you mind then its likely that you were thinking about blowing you mind in another way out of bored-ness and for this i apologize... deeply... thanks for reading bye!!!

Jingle bells assessment smells!!! please please go away!!

Aha another term and half the uni gone what am i going to do this jolly Christmas holiday well probably panic actually.

I don't think there is one person in the class this year who can claim that they haven't felt the pinch that is the epic torture of deadlines and immense workloads, yes as the stress increases the blood rushing towards my head gifts me with a throbbing ache on the side of my temple.

The only way to work efficiently is to wrap myself in a self created world of white like a blank canvas with nothing but a single focal point (this of course being my laptop).

The need for silence during these times is always broken by some poor sap who ends up on the receiving end of my verbal abuse and outburst in some vain attempt to release some steam which always results in a frenzy and inevitably more stress from the lack of work produced during the time wasted shouting at these people who are disturbing my Zen state.

The purpose of that rant was merely another form of stress release thanks blogger for wasting my time *slams keyboard* lol....

Lay down on the couch please! oops wrong one..

Hello peoples so this is my first blog of the new uni year and already finding it very difficult to find topics to discuss or perhaps its my general fear of text ahhhhhhh i can see it now cant you?..
Any who this first blog is about why i chose the artist and masterpiece i replicated rather poorly i might add.

I have never really been bothered to study artists work its always been if i see a piece i like then ill appreciate it but it wouldnt make me want to go hmm i wonder what else this artist has done and also what his background was. So from that mentality i have never really known many artists by name except for of course the obvious ones which even then i tend to get mixed up though i have never quite got Leonardo da Vinci and leonardo dicaprio mixed up like my friend managed to in school *epic failure*.

There are a few names that i did know of though mostly because of my college days and the one that popped up and seemed to register in my mind was Lucian Freud. Im sure i managed to get him mixed up with bizzarely incestrial professor named Sigmund Freud a few times back then but now recently i have taken more notice of his work and its a name that unlike others seems to have been etched into my head.

The piece i chose ' Naked young girl' hard not to sound perverted with that but it was the first image i saw in college in what was during a brief spell of traditional art lessons. At the time i thought the level of detail was great and it never really went much further than that, but now when in mikes lecture a few weeks ago when one of his pieces came up i realised this was one of many fanstastic pieces of work at such a high level of detail and attention. For the first time i started paying attention to how he portrayed the contours in the face and brought as much shape and depth as possible forward.

So this lead me back to that picture i saw in college (clever way round saying the title there) and before i never would have dreamed about attempting to reproduce this fantastic piece of art but thats what made it interesting as it was something i never thought i could do. Naturally i know my final piece isnt no where near on the same par as the original but its something that has spurred me on to make me follow his example and try to get the most detail possible out of a painting by focusing on the finer details and contours and this applys to all types of paintings not just portraits.

I learnt alot from doing this and i think during the christmas break i may just attempt to replicate another of his works or perhaps try using the style in a self portrait.
Well anyways thanks for taking time to read this laters people!

The yearly reflection and feedback...

Well the end of the uni year is upon us and its now at least for me that the work begins in what i feel was a rather slacking year for me and all i can do is apologize for that. Year 2 will be the start or the real course and i will be ready for it.

In this blog i realise i am suppose to say about any enhancements and such and happily i will. The one i have been thinking for a while now is wednesdays with Mike. They are good and the speeches and talks are great but what i find is the talks in the morning really motivate me to work but then i watch the film in the afternoon and depending on the type of film all of that driver gets truly zaped out of me. I know im not the only one who feels like this because ive discussed it with a few other students and its why at times unless its a film ive been really wanting to see i have missed the film in the afternoon purposely to continue working. I realise the importance of the films so i normally either borrow them off a friend or rent them out for the night and this system works for me quite well.

So the thougght is switching them around but i can see how this would also be a bad idea and to make it work it would need a little more thinking.

I cant complain about mondays as the layout is fine and everything seems to work the only thing i would say is that the tutorials are done before most people start the work but then again everyone develops their own way of doing things and the new method can be tried on the next model.

ahh visual design its no secret that this isnt my favourite subject lol but its a necessity and once again it seems to work the only annoying thing is that people have switched groups unbalancing the numbers but thats the students faults not the tutors but definatly need to find a way to keep that balance.

Right sorry ajavascript:void(0)bout the ranting but its little thoughts some of which are obvious and some which are not so obvious. To the learning stuff well i think what was writen in the blog brief was a good structure for next year and really until its in action i cant really comment on them but to get another artist in like ben mathis again would be ace and more sculpting is a great idea as it is certainly helping me with form and is definaly rubbing off on to my 3d skills. Not to mention its jst nice to see a 2d sketch come to like in real life 3d form.

Well i know i havent been much help but i tried and thats all that matters, later people..

The scale of this industry...

To continue from the poor title above, the scale of this industry or branch of media as some would put it is getting increasingly bigger. This is displayed in many ways but i have just been made aware of one way which shows not only how much it has expanded but also the seriousness of it all as a business in modern society.

The GDC is basically what i am refering to. It stands for Game Developers Conference and spans all the career roots and what exactly is happening within them. Any people who go along to this go to either see the latest developements in there fields or to see the latest development in the industry in general giving game companys a chance to flex their muscles and display new engines or technologys they may be developing.

Ive watched a videos off the net now and have seen some of the impressive techs that have been developed for realtime heres one to do with lighting that really impressed me as i consider lighting one of the fundimental aspects of a games realism.


Concluding this im really looking forward to seeing what companys have conjured up, personally im hoping for a new point and click technology to add a boom in that area *sigh* i can hope.

life changing or career building???

This is by far the easiest blog to write as i knew before i started the course as to what i stood to gain from it.. For everyone this may be similer or completely different but we all have one common reason for being at uni and that is to pursue a career in computer games.

For me i knew in college that i wanted to be a modeller, and ive gotten pretty good at it and at texturing and rigging as well as animation. But i lack in the drawing area for similar reasons as was mentioned in one of mikes talks about the educational system taking the creativity out of us well sadly as far as drawing was concerned i was one of them and even more sadly it caused me to lose interest in it full stop.

I have already gained from uni in a sense that i am now doing drawing and although im not great im improving all the time and thats one of the things i hope to achieve in the 3 years. I know i wont be picasso but it helps me with my abbition to be a modeller as it gives me a firm understanding of form, in other words if i can draw it and understand the form then i can definatly model it in a 3d package. Of course this also helps my texturing ability as well.

In all every aspect of the course is helping me to improve and move forward to my goal and hopefully by the end of the 3rd year i will be exactly where i want to be.

Games in education dont mock it plumbers, it does exist!!

This is a fairly new concept in education and yes is mocked by most educators who mindlessly do not understand the aspects of game development.
The problem video game educators have is firstly its a forever changing industry and therefore the education and expectations are always changing because of this it makes it a very dynamic subject to teach.

The dilema is mostly down to two different qualitys that companys go for.. One of the qualitys is that companys want highly trained staff and this applys for both artists and programmers alike. However there are other companies that would prefer more creative employees with more tradition skills along the lines of fine art oppposed to studying specifically for games. This obviously posers a issue for game educators as they have to have a fine balance in teaching between the two.

The real question is which one is right and which is wrong, well neither of them are wrong as both contain valuable assets that companys crave so a mix of both is the perfect solution tho obviously this means that companys only looking for one quality may choose to employ someone who has just studyied one of them that they favour instead of a potential employee who has studied both.

When put like that it just shows how hard it must be for a course leader to decide the direction of the course and what to teach and what not to teach.

On a personal level i think the fine balance between the two is the right direction it provides the essencial skills to a reasonably high level while also exploring the traditional aspects or art, but its no secret that in the industry experience is often favoured over fresh meat no matter how talented the person may be but everyone has to start somewhere hey?...