Crunch time!

Hi everyone, it has been another exciting week since I last wrote anything, the reason: the epic crunch has started! For the past week we have been working 12 hours a day, seven days a week! GGC is in less than two weeks and we still have a lot to do. It is tiring but very enjoyable to work like this, we get a lot done in a day and can see our progress! We try to make our crunch as enjoyable as possible, for example, this Saturday we worked, ate pie and watched the Eurovision song contest together :)

For this post I want to update you with some things I have created for the first week of the crunch, as well as show you a texture I made for our character B-Bob quite a while ago.

METAL
I am going to begin with sharing some of the textures I have made for some of the mechanical artefacts found in the game.

First out is one of the turrets the players can buy and use as extra defence while playing. This is the Frost turret!



Here is the re spawn machine, if you die while playing the game, here is where you will be resurrected, so you can continue playing! Imagine this with super awesome particle effects of lightning!



Last but not least, here is an example of the mechanical stairs that the teams has placed out in the near vicinity of their home bases to get from low to high ground and vice versa!


Wheelbarrows

So, as I said before I would give you some thoughts on the texture for our second character B-Bob. When creating the texture, I started by making the wheelbarrow in a tree material, as this was what Stina who made the character concept had decided on. When starting out finding a base colour to work from, I could not find anything I liked. After a while I tried a different approach, I decided to make the wheel barrow in a metal material instead. This made more sense to me because B-Bob uses his wheel barrow as his weapon and smashes things with it. If it would have been made of tree it might have been destroyed much earlier. I showed my results to Stina and Elias and they liked it. It was also better because this B-Bob got more contrasts in colour.

Here is a picture of the finished texture of B-Bob including his awesome wheelbarrow :)



So, with that, it is back to work, see ya!

My work!

Hi everyone!

As I have told you, I am working as an artist for our team, creating both 2D and 3D art. When entering this project I wanted to develop as an artist. Last year I was with the group creating a game called SAGE for GGA. At that time, my role was that of a producer and there for I did not have as much time as I would have liked to draw and develop artistically. Since I have not decided in which field I would like to work with in the future I wanted to try out to work as an art "grunt".

As I am most focused on 2D art at the moment, all though I have created quite a few 3D models for the project, I will try to form a list of what skills are useful when one should work as a 2D artist for a game company. This will hopefully give a clearer view to me as an artist what I need to focus and practice on to become a great 2D artist. I will focus mainly on concepts and textures as this is what I have been working with.

To be a great 2D artist especially when you are making concepts, I do believe one of the most important skills you can have is creativity and imagination. You can have awesome drawing skills and make the most beautiful images, but it does not matter that much if you don't have any imagination. If you can't create something of your own or use your imagination to create someone else's vision, I do believe you will have a hard time as an artist for a game company.

Another important skill for all members of a game designing team is to have social skills. If you have a hard time talking to your co-workers and agree on development choices, you will have a hard time creating a great game. One thing that can really mess up a project is bad team work, were not everyone are moving towards the same goal. I think you should always think of the different aspects of the game, even if you are just making concepts or textures. What makes a great game, is when everyone is working together, communicating often so that everything works together. Always think about every aspect of the prop you are creating.

Of course, one essential skill is that you can draw. Of course this require you to practise, practise and practise some more. You can never be too good at anything, and you can always learn new techniques and skills. It takes determination and passion to be a really great artist.

There are a lot of skills one need to become a great artist, and I can go on forever, but one that I think is extra important, not only for artists but for developers in general, is to be able to kill your darlings. If you can't deny them you will not develop as fast. I do believe it is good to have some skills that you always can bring with you, some things you do good and like to do, but if you want to learn new things and develop and are willing to adapt and change your style, you are more likely to get a job or be great at something else. One thing that is really boring is to see the same art and games over and over again.

PHEEEW! Now that was covered!
So to finish up, what tips and tricks do I use to learn and develop as an artist?
I want to start by saying that I have learnt a lot during this project, and I can easily say that nearly all of them has been done while making mistakes.

It takes a lot of time and the text will be quite extensive if I should describe all the best practices one may use when creating art for a game, but I think I can squeeze in a few.

As a rule of thumb, I think it is, as I mentioned earlier, very important to think of the other team mates when creating your art, weather it be 2D or 3D. For example: always scribble down the measurements of the things you are making concepts of, so that the person making the 3D art does not end up with a house smaller than a bush for example.

When you are creating 3D art, always remember to erase all irrelevant polygons without destroying the models silhouette, always create an as understandable UV-map as possible making it easier for the one making the textures and make sure that your model does not have any n-gons (polygons with more than 4 faces).

A good thing is to write down lists of standard actions you should do before sending your work forward to the next worker in line. If something is wrong and that is discovered much later in the project, it will be very costly, both in time and resources.

PHEEEW once again! That was a long post, I hope both you and I have learnt something, and before I go, I just want to say that if I come up with any more great practices whilst working, I will try to update it to you!

Thank you for reading :)

Characters!!!!

Yo, everyone!

What up? This week has been filled with mishaps and computer crashes. This Monday my computer decided to die and for about two days I could not work at all. I had to make back up files for everything in safe mode on my computer and then turn it in to the technical support at school. The next day when it was returned to me it was installed with old versions of the programs I used and Windows XP. So, therefore I had to spend the entire Tuesday with attaining the correct versions of the programs I needed, install these and get the computer ready for action. One our before going home I could finally start working.

But everything is fixed now and the computer is running smoothly! :D

So instead of telling you of all these boring issues I am going to show you the texture of our first character the Starving Barbarian that I have been working with in two iterations.

I created the first texture some weeks ago, but we decided that the model we used then had too few details. Therefore we added more polygons to the model, making it more interesting. For this texture I just had to move around the diffuse I had created for the model with too few polysgons.

I think it turned out good! The changes to the model really created a more interesting character that is interesting to look at, and has his own character. I especially like the expressionless, yet angry face with the huge bags under his eyes!



Before I go I also want to show you a fun glimps at our next awesome character, at the moment called B-Bob! When I was drawing his face on the diffuse Elias said that he did not have enough lips, and after that it got out of hand! I actually hope that we could use create some nutty textures for our characters just for the fun of it!



Any ways, have a nice evening!

Ciao :)