if ever there was a good reason to go to facebook

Thanks Dan!

its on like donkey kong

stroke it

Finally got some cute poses of Astronaughty but forgot to shoot them at high res/save the poses. Will fix that and do some more again.  

Progress on space guy (he's not dirtied up yet) and layout for showing in ruff.

Had a lot of fun using paths and Photoshop's FX features to create procedural effects. Only thang panted on him is his face. More work to follows!

she's so heavy

Planty Plants

Here's a worksheet for building different plants for our game. Need to break up the bark one (and space them so they'd fit on triangles better) but learned a lot using smudge to paint first shadows, and then up to high lights. Letting a bit of a base color bleed in (on the flower leaves) also helped bring in some saturation and warmth.

3d Flora Builds

Craziness!

Also, if you haven't seen this...



enjoy. 

I'll give you some fuckin lasers man!

Building for CG315. Had to use a Raytrace material to get reflections to work...whoo!

And check out my fucking max procedural trees! LO-CO!

Was tasked to make some platforms. And sometimes I can model without concept, but for this situation I decided I might need some.

So I made these by taking photos of streamlined cars and manipulating them. Not a bad result, now will start the modeling part.

Progress on my building tile set

zenny poo

Worked on some texture stuff this week!

This model was originally made by the hatterific Arisa, and after I did a little puffy funktion to the model (directed to by the pufferfunkerton Suzanne), and bit of texture work, we've gotten a little further along on Zen's cuteriffic development.

One thing to note is that Photoshop's fx filters, when applied to a 3D model in Photoshop, can be a great way to preview the way you may want a character to appear shader-wise. I used stroke, outer glow, inner glow, and a gradient to achieve the effect. Also a great way to iterate. You can rotate the model and see the effect of the fx.

I found it to be a great way to visualize how I want this character to appear in game.

Now to enslave my programmers...

yee-huuuuuh?

Yeahhh...fun presentation. Ran outta time on this one, and still trying to figure out lighting better in Max.

Game Boards (Scenario Boards)

So I was recently reading an Iwata Asks, which is a series of interviews performed by Nintendo's president that involves designers, artists, and devs from different companies that produce different Nintendo titles.

I came upon this particular page (they interview the two other guys involved in the Mario series from day one) and it had a lot of interesting things to say!

Iwata Asks : Adjusting the Map In A Daily Cycle
http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol2_page4.jsp

I was shocked because they brought up the three things that I had brought together in my mind this week:

1) Knowing the duration of a "level" or sequence (Miyamoto estimated a level should be about 1 minute for SMB)
2) Designing to a number of "screens", or storyboards to match that duration (drawing on graph paper and laying out these scenarios into different "screens")
3) Using these layouts to create predictable player reactions (if I put this here, the player will go here, do this, ect.)

They also talked about shuffling levels that are sophisticated and deserve to be played when a player can handle them (later in the game) and creating easier levels later on in the production to unroll features slowly.

I'm not sure why I never brought together time with my scenario board idea, but I guess film class hit me in the back of the head this week and gave me a big package of awesome poop.

bomber mouse, bomber mouse

They say he looks like a skull, but perhaps that's appropriate?
First pass at bombermouse!

Today I met Shigeru Miyamoto. He visited Nintendo of America for the first time in 8 years to celebrate with us the 25th anniversary of Mario. The guy is freaking awesome. He's very excited, very positive, creative, and he's the type of person that literally cannot stop smiling. He was originally the person that inspired me to pursue this industry, and it was amazing to hear his ideas about what inspires him (his hamster inspired him to make Mario in Mario 64's movement). He's exactly the type of person that I'd like to work for and work like, especially the way that he carried himself in such a positive and excited manner. Also, he made Pikmin so he's got my vote for World Dominator.

i me mine

Started using the lasso tool to make big clean shapes. It rocks!

lantern progress! testing renders

Like the look of the metal on this one.