Coming Soon

Right first off the boat is on hold for a little while as i want/need to get the set projects done, but i hope to have it finished for the assesments in december.

Secondly when i've got a little more together i'm going to start posting about my major project, ooo exciting stuff indeed.

And so on to the current projects, my treasure chest is almost done just needs few finishing touches, and in keeping with a theme, renders of it to come soon.

But i wanted to get on with the next project, the rooftop. It's going to be chalanging with only having 2 1024 diffuse maps, but i suppose thats the point and i should learn from it, thats the plan anyway.

Anyway i've heard a lot of talk latly about this google sketch up pro, so i've given it a download and had a little play. I must say it is actually really good, it's very smooth and easy to use, as other people have said very intuative. If some of the features were incorporated into max then max would be far easier/quicker to use, just the simple idea's they have put in it make it a truly good program.

So i'm going to lay out my rooftop scene using this, i manged to sketch up this image in about 20 mins-ish, but got use to all the tools and like now i think so will have another play soon.



I think this layout may be a bit too ambitious for the texture budget, but i'm going to get some reference material tomorrow, little wonder around leicester anyway.

So as i've said, more to come soon!

Until Next Time...

Rusty Old Fishing Boat

Boat that im currently working on, getting through the uv's at the moment.

all together it's 17,674 tris,

but the boat alone is 4,424
the wire ropes and cables are 2,356
and all other asset's at 10,894



Found the boat when i was in Plymouth, took loads of refrence photo's to make it as accurate as possible, i even now know where every rope goes on that boat and know pretty much how it all works, all the more knowledge I suppose.

JD Update

Little update of so far, im about where i wanted to be, but having a little trouble with the texture on the pool table for reasons unknow which is slightly annoying.

Jack Daniel's

So I've decided to set myself a little project to do as i really need something to work towards at the moment. I remember quite a while ago seeing an old third year brief where they had to recreate a piece of art but in 3D. I thought this was fairly cool and remember seeing someone had made the melting Dali clocks, so I'm going down a similar path.


I've had this poster on my wall for a while and have always though that would be cool to try and redo in 3D, and as i have the time on my hands now there's no better time. I'm going to treat it as a brief, as if it's a piece of concept art been given to me and i have to model it.

I setting myself 2 weeks to do this, i don't want it to be a on going lingering project, will be a nice challenge i feel, I'll keep putting wips on here, so see you soon!

The Retro Conduit

I've been following this game for a while now (well actually from it's very first announcement), which is something i don't normally do any more, possible because it can build up false hopes expectations, along side this i tend not to read reviews anymore, I'll decide weather i like it or not thank you very much.

But yeah I'm hoping good things for this game, the one thing is it has it's own engine that high voltage have made specifically for the Wii, which will hopefully give the games that extra faness.

Right now to the point of this post, the box art. I actually really like this box art for the simple reason that it looks like an old retro box art from the Atari era. in those days games consisted of a dot following another dot, (hmm reminiscence of a old first year task here...) but these 'pixel' games had a lot of life because of the box art. I remember playing games that had on the cover some extravagant art of a dragon and some features character surrounded by flames, it was awesome, and then when you moved your dot in the game you just imagined it was what was on the cover of the game, just proving the power of our imagination. hmm i could go on here but i know I've blogged about this before, http://jasongarlick.blogspot.com/2008/02/week-eigth-squares-and-dots-realistic.html it's in there somewhere, read if you must.

Real Life

Just fancy sharing a few thoughts I've got going on, works all in for next week and it's starting to take it's tole so need some venting.

First off just wanted to comment on the dominance war, and i must stress these are my personal opinions and i think none less of people who do take part. But i was reading through the brief for this years and realised that it just wasn't exciting me at all. There's a new 'type' for this years war which is the demons, and while i was reading about it, not at one point did i think ahhh cool i need to enter this, i think the closest i got to this feeling was in the mechanical section where it was talking about vehicles. And the reason for this is fantasy and making up these 'creatures' just doesn't appeal, I'm much more happy and driven to do realistic things. Now because I've said that I'm not cutting it out completely, i enjoy the concepts that people can come up with, but still i think the best things are ideas/designs that are closely related with realism, or at least had a solid starting point a plenty of research done.

Anyway just to flow on from that, life drawing is something I've got more excited about this term, i think it's because I'm now starting to really 'get' it more and enjoy trying out different techniques, styles, angles and whatever. slightly disappointed that as soon as i was realising this we don't have any now, might have to look into doing some over the summer if i can. So here's a few from this term I'd like to share.

These were done using oil pastels which i hadn't really used before so i was slightly apprehensive, but once Chris gave me a couple of pointers i had so much fun using them, and learnt more than i did if I'd spent the whole session using just a pencil, glad i used them!

Again following on from my little rant, me and Tim started going out and about in Leicester to do some watercolour paintings, which has just been so much fun, going out and actually doing something is a far better way to learn, and as i said fun! i would seriously recommend it, and even if you go and you end up with a piece your not too happy with it doesn't really matter, i guarantee you'll have had fun doing it and learnt something. I'm planning on regularly going to better improve my skills and so I'm actually seeing real life. That's one thing i will not like about an office job, sitting in front of a screen all day, I'd just have to get out to do real things and physically interacting. So here's a few of the paintings I've done so far.

This was the first one i did, was at abbey
park, was pretty happy with it as well.

Also at Abbey Park, found the old ruins of the Abbey which
was cool, this is a view from the ruins looking
at that building which sells ice cream!

This time we decided to go in the complete opposite direction, found some country lanes and cool stuff, nice bit where the river came through an old bridge, unfortunately it then poured down with rain so couldn't actually do the painting while we were there, so did one at home, which was just not as fun as being there.

Unreal Engine

So you say Unreal Engine to someone in the games industry and it's a certainty that they'll have a few wars stories to tell, and this term I’ve had the 'pleasure' of getting acquainted with this destroyer of minds.

Well to be honest I don’t think it's as bad as all the talk, like any program really it has it's moments, and yes I’ve lost my temper with it once or twice...maybe thrice, but it has some really nice effects, and gives a more accurate display of models than max does.

At this week in GDC they've been showing of some of the new engines toys and gadgets, and they do look really really nice, the only thing I’d be worried about is it might be making it too easy for people to do. What I mean by this is people who use it may do things not really understanding what’s going on, they'll end up with something pretty, but unless you understand you'll never get that step further. That applies to a lot of things in general, if someone tells me do this this and this to make this I’m always wanting to know why, and what happens if you do this instead of this, this is the only way you'll truly learn. Anyway back to the point I was getting to, one of the new things was a realistic bounce light system, now yes this will give great feel and life to levels, but unless you understand bounce light you'll never get that step further.



This is a nice shot where the light hitting the red drapes bleeds onto the surrounding objects, in the current engine if you wanted that effect you'd have to figure it out for yourself, and these are things you only learn from seeing it in real life and trying to recreate it yourself, that’s the point I’m trying to make, you only learn something if you actually try and do it your self, not just reading about, it's why practical sessions are quite often the most effective.

Anyway talking about unreal, I’m almost finished in putting my environment from last term into the engine. I wanted to improve upon it, although I did like it I always felt it was lacking slightly, so I’ve tried to create more of a mood by making it night time, putting in some realistic lights, and just all round trying to make it better. Just needs going over with a fine comb now, enjoy!