Spillin the beans (Part 2)

 Welcome back to Spillin the beans! This post won't be as in depth as the last, nor will it be about Spillins as he has been sent off for rigging by master animator Steven "Crane Style" Craner and so I haven't done any more work to him.

 Instead I've been doing various bits of environmental modelling and texturing so this is going to be about that. Hopefully there will be something of interest in here for you and if not it's always nice to document the work that I've done. Anyway...

Awwwwww here it goes.....
 Also we have a new Facebook page for the game (click here) and it needs your likeage! Anyway...
Awwww here it goes.....

Lever

 My first port of call was to model and texture the lever that appears throughout the game to open doors, gates etc. The model itself didn't take too long but the texture did take a few hours as it was the first thing I'd textured in a long time. I don't tend to keep my layout clean as I don't really see the point with this kind of model but with characters etc it's obviously better to make the most of space with the UV layout.

 Here's the texture map of the lever base, I was going to post the separate handle texture but it's even less interesting than this:

  

 And here's the model textured and in-engine (without lighting built, that's why it appears to be lighter than the rest of the environment):

 Hopefully it will stand up to being a recurring environment piece!

Chest & Graveyard Wall

 For the next two assets I've only needed to do the modelling so far so no texturing here.

First up is the treasure chest. It's not remarkably different from the treasure chest you imagined when you read the previous sentence but I tried to jazz it up a bit with handles and pointy bits so hopefully it's unique enough to fit into our world. Here's a render of the model: 

 Second is the wall and gateway that separates the regular citizens' graveyard from the VIP tombs (I think). The concave side (citizens) will be stone bricks and the convex side (VIP) is built up from large rocks and boulders. Here's the render:

 Will possibly be texturing these next week so look out for them.

Flower Bushes

 Here's the one you've all been waiting for. Don't pretend you haven't. I know you have. Here's the flower bushes (I textured, Pete modelled):

 And here's the texture map which I think looks pretty funky:

 Well that's all for Part 2. Hope you enjoyed, more will be coming soon. Please like the Facebook page if you haven't already and help support and promote the game!

Bye.

Mid-Month Madness... Just an October update

 Just a quick mid-month update on non-Seeker stuff I've been doing.

First is a follow up to the business card I did for Lanny last month. He asked me to design a poster with pull tabs to promote his English tuition, so if you're German and can't read this get in touch with him.

 My Minecraft Lego videos have been having a steady flow of views which I'm incredibly pleased with as I was only expecting a couple of hundred views maximum. I'm encouraged to make more but I really can't find the time at the moment.

 I've also kindly been asked to design a tattoo for my girlfriend's brother incorporating various parts of his personality. It's not finished yet so will only post a sneak peek here but I think it's looking good so far:

 I think that's about everything now. I'm keeping updates about The Seeker in separate posts so that they're easier to promote. One should be appearing later on this evening. bye

September Update (Short and Sweet)

 Just a quick run-through of some of the stuff I've been up to recently...

1st is a tattoo design for one of my mates at work:

2nd is a business card design for Lanny (both sides are combined to make this image):

3rd is my first ever published piece of work! My advert for the Camera Centre, where I now work (www.cameracentreuk.com/). I've done a few bits of design at work including posters, web banners etc:

That's all for now. Quorn is fucking disgusting. Bye

Spillin the beans (Part 1)

 It's been a quite a while since my last post. I've got a job now and have been working on stuff in the rest of my free time so that's why! But here I am again with a big update specifically about my work on Project Steel, which has since become 'The Seeker'.

 We have an IndieDB page to keep you up to date and you can find that by clicking here.

So yeah this post is going to be a recap on where I was up to in the design process of the character Spillins last time and, from there, cover his progression into a 3D model in-engine. There will be some ground I've covered before but hopefully enough new stuff to be interesting. Aww here it goes...

Character Design

 With a pair of sketches of Spillins that Pete drew last year as a starting point I began work on the character design concept drawing. Using reference points such as famous historical explorers, american mountain men, and Yoda, the drawing took shape and finally ended up as the image you can see above.

 While designing Spillins I made a conscious effort to make him as recognisable from a distance as possible. As he is such a mysterious character and will occasionally appear at long distances unannounced it is important that his design catches the player's eye so that they don't miss him. The two main factors I took into account were his silhouette and his colour palette. 

Giving him a large rucksack, bulky figure, and bald head combined with a red coat with white fur (based on an image of the aforementioned mountain men I found) will hopefully mean he stands out against both the white mountains and the dark green forest settings of the game. 

Orthographic Drawing

 With the concept drawing complete the next step was to create an orthographic drawing of the character to aid the transition into a 3D model.

 I suffer from the problem of not being able to draw the same thing twice so, as you can imagine, I'm not a massive fan of this type of drawing. Luckily however I knew before I started that I would be modelling Spillins so I didn't have to go into a serious amount of detail as I could visualise the missing pieces in my head, having come up with the character's design myself. Had I had to pass the drawing on to someone else for modelling (or if this is the case in the future) I would have gone into a lot more detail to make sure they understood exactly how he is meant to look.

 Having said all that, the orthographics were fairly painless to draw and I had a good image in my head of how Spillins was going to look as a 3D model.

3D Modelling

 I was so glad to get into the task of modelling Spillins. As much as I'm satisfied by finishing a drawing, it doesn't come close to modelling, which I find constantly rewarding.

 There's little to say about modelling the main bulk of the character's body, arms, and legs as it was so trouble-free and quickly finished. The video below shows the body at an almost finished stage with a placeholder head:

 Once the main body was finished I moved on to Spillins' hands, which turned out to be the most frustrating but ultimately rewarding part of the model. Although the topology isn't great I'm incredibly happy with the shaping of the hand:

 Next was probably the most important part of the model, the head... The following image shows the head throughout the process growing from a random bunch of polygons into something more recognisable:

 And here's the head at this point on a partially accessorised body (rendered in Maya):

 After quite a few hours of developing and tweaking the head is complete. Following that more accessories are added and the model is complete and reading for engine testing:

 And again with the wireframe visible (don't forget to view the pictures in full size!):

 I'm pretty pleased with the model's poly count (weighing in at just under 4000 faces) but obviously still have much to learn when it comes to low-poly game modelling (and modelling in general of course). Since finishing the model I've found some great topology pictures of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood characters which have insanely low poly counts and which I will be using very closely as reference points for future character modelling. 

 To wrap up this part of the development of Spillins I give you him in-engine (UDK) with a rather jazzy sandstone texture (unfortunately not two-sided as his bag strap is invisible):

 I hope you agree that he's looking good and hope that this post offers a bit more insight than usual haha! Next time I will hopefully have the model textured and possibly rigged, but that's all for now.

BYE

June 2012 dump

 After the tidal wave of posts in May I've been relatively quiet this month. I have done some stuff though and here it is...

 I've started working on the orthographic drawings for the Project Steel characters and this is the first completed one, Spillins. Normally I'd tidy up the drawing with clean lines before signing them off but we've decided that I will be modelling him so there's no real need as I have a good enough picture of what he looks like:

 At the very end of last month I also released episode 2 of my lego-style minecraft instruction videos so here it is:

 Finally I have set up a DeviantArt page (http://enormousblogodile.deviantart.com/) to post and promote stuff. You can get to it via the other sites/contact list on the right of the blog.

bye

Project Steel Character Design

 Finally finished the character concept drawings I've been working on for the past few weeks. They are for Project Steel, a game I am working on with a few friends. So yeah, I'll let them do the talking:

Captain Hawk

Adam Adams (First Mate)

Gunner (waiting for a name)

Rascal (Quartermaster)

Twin Deckhands (waiting for names as well)

Spillins (Mystery Man!)

 Very pleased with how these have come out. The recent drawing practise has paid off I think.

Let me know what you think. BYE

Yogdrawing + Project Steel

 As some of you will know I am a massive fan of The Yogscast. I decided to do a drawing of their most popular minecraft series so here it is: 

 I'm very pleased with how it came out. It's a similar style to my Mario and Luigi pictures but slightly less creepy I think.

 Also here is a silhouette and scale image of all the character designs I have been doing over the past few weeks. They are for a game I am currently working on with Pete and Ollie called Project Steel, at the moment, and you can get more information on the current build etc by clicking on this exact text which will take you to Pete's blog.

 Full character design drawings coming soon!

bye.

LUUUIIIGIIIIII...

 I've drawn a companion piece to my Creepy Mario picture. It's creepy Luigi (click for full screen view, open in new tab for even bigger):

 Very pleased with him and it didn't take too long either!

Finished the initial sketches for all the characters I've been designing, now to tidy them up and colour.

bye 

Weaver from Black Ops

 After the reveal trailer for Black Ops 2 I played through the original again. It's great in some ways and appalling in others. Here's some more warm-up art, this time it's of Weaver, one of the support characters in Black Ops. He's one of my favourite characters even though he doesn't really do much of note but yeah here he is (Pete's gonna bust my balls for not doing the character art yet haha):

 I don't like the fact that it looks like it took a lot less time to make than it did but I do like that it looks messy and slightly unfinished and the fact that it was done in Photoshop shows through. Anyways now for some proper work.
 Also new Minecraft video coming next week.
BYE

MCA drawing

 More drawing warm-up. Today I drew MCA from the Beastie Boys who died yesterday. I'm not really a superfan but I've listened to and loved the Beastie Boys since school when I got The Sounds of Science so thought MCA deserved a tribute drawing. It's not as good as I would have liked but I have a lot more drawing to do as I said yesterday so couldn't spend too long on it (it looks better in full screen so click on it):

And here's Rhymin' & Stealin', a classic BB track: 

 I have the DVD of 'Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!' which, if you like music at all, you have to watch.
The concept art I'm doing is coming along nicely so will hopefully be posting some finished art soon.
BYE

Star Wars Day 2012 (Darth Maul)

 Just a quick drawing to warm up for the massive amount of drawing I have to do over the next week. As it's May the 4th I decided to do a Star Wars-themed picture so here's Darth Maul (probably the best thing about The Phantom Menace). Might do one every year!

 Also my amazing girlfriend bought me a Lego Boba Fett clock (click the Star Wars label at the bottom of this post to see my other Star Wars stuff including a sketch of Boba!): 

 More stuff coming soon byyyyyyyyeeeeeee and may the force be with you.

The first dump of May

 We hit 10,000 views last Friday so a massive thanks to everyone who has visited and fed the Blogodile over the years. I think the stat-tracking started in mid-2010 so there are probably some uncounted views but yeah, hopefully the next 10,000 will come quicker! 

 To celebrate we've given the Blogodile a wash and a make over as you've probably seen so let me know what you think of the new design.

 Also decided to leave my Creepy Mario picture as it was (with a couple of adjustments) as it received so much great feedback. I did start adding textures to his clothes but in the end decided it was good enough without so here's the finished piece:

 Lanny is hopefully going to get it printed as a poster so I will post a photo of it when he takes one.

 Finally here is the completed version of episode 1 of my Lego Minecraft videos:

 There's still some stuff that needs changing and adding. I've changed the font of the 'BLOGO' logo on the title card as well as changing the Minecraft text colour. I also want to change the font of the text in the instructions. Any ideas let me know.
 In the future I want to do a 3D animation of a Lego-style Minecraft box opening and the instructions and blocks falling out to start the video rather than just a title card. Finally, a friend's idea, I will add a page at the start of the instructions listing all the blocks required for the entire build.

 That's all for now bye

New Google+ page!

LOL jk jk it's a Facebook page. Here's the linky for you to likey:

facebook.com/TheEnormousBlogodile

Hopefully it will make things a lot easier so please like and share the page if you enjoy Blogodile.

bye

Day 25 (Scenery) take 2 + Lego Minecraft

 I finally got in gear and decided to finish off one of the two drawings I missed during my 30 days of drawing back in August/September 2010 as it's been bugging me for ages that I didn't finish all 30 days at the time. This is the view from my room in Cardiff as opposed to the original attempt which was the view from my old Newport room. I'm very happy with it, it's fairly simplistic but I think it looks good. 

 Was thinking about maybe getting it printed on some white T-shirts or black ones if it had a white border in a similar vain to these http://www.supremebeing.com/lo-fi-towers-t-shirt-white/. That was just an idea though.
 Only one more to do now and this time I'm going to stick to the original idea and draw my Grandpa.

 In other news I've made a Minecraft building instruction video based on the paper Lego instruction manuals. It's just a tester type thing to work out the format etc but here it is:



 Please give it a watch and your support with a thumbs up and a comment. I'll hopefully do more in future of the bigger and more exciting buildings I've made in creative mode so watch this space!

 Mental note: other things I have to finish are my Emma Watson portrait from ages ago, my Mortal Kombat picture, and my creepy Mario.
BYE

March 2012 Update (with added Star Wars)

 Hello.
It's been too long since I posted anything and I've lost the knack of starting a post with a load of bullshit so I'm just going to post pictures and tell you what they are etc... (Don't forget to right-click > new tab if you want to see the images in full resolution)

 I decided to add a lightsaber to my graduation photo and it received a massive amount of positive feedback on Facebook (I graduated last year with a 2:1 with hons in Computer Games Design):

 Then my friend Dan of Toxic Games (creators of Q.U.B.E) asked me to do one for him! I'm in the Q.U.B.E credits as a tester! My first credit in a game :) It's a great game and you should definitely check it out. You can find it on Steam and loads of other places.

 Similar stuff again here although a lot more recent. A friend asked me to Star Wars up some photos of his brother and nephew, both of whom love the films, so here they are. I'm very happy with how they turned out and they are probably some of my best photo manipulating in Photoshop so far:

Jack

and Jamie

  Next up is an image I have only finished tonight. It's a Photoshop painting of an angry parrot, created as a promotional image for my friend Steve aka Phrazer for his soon to be released track 'Angry Parrot'. Visit his Soundcloud and listen now!

 This last picture is a WIP of a creepy Mario drawing I am slowly doing. I made the mistake of posting it on Facebook as it is here and got some really positive feedback meaning that I decided it was good enough like this. I really want to finish it though:

 In other artwork related news I had my first potentially paid commission for a website header but it fell through and they used their own design. I was very happy with the work I did and it showed progression in my design skills but I won't be posting the work on here as it might act as promotion for their website and basically fuck that. I learnt quite a bit from the experience though which is great!  

 Finally my two housemates (Pete and Ollie) and I have been playing a lot of multiplayer Minecraft on the Exiled Gaming server and have made some really cool stuff. We have set up a Youtube channel for videos of our adventures on the servers as well as some up-and-coming building instruction videos by me.

 Here's our first video. I'm blocodile and I don't have a mic (subscribe, like, comment, share etc):

 Hope you like what I've had to show. Hopefully Blogodile droppings will become more frequent again soon. Please like, follow, comment and all that stuff if you feel like helping me out :) 

 Bye.

30 kills 0 deaths :O

 I'm a big fan of Call of Duty and have been playing a lot of MW3 recently. I've been playing almost exclusively Free For All.

 Here's a video of my best ever match of any CoD game where I got 30 kills to 0 deaths.

In the words of a friend "WARNING! MAY CONTAIN MILD CAMPING!": 

 Video details: 2x speed and shitty phone camera video and sound quality. At the very start it's not me as I joined a few seconds late. There's some mild camping but I was getting paranoid about dying!

 Just thought I'd post it haha. Any questions about my setup can go in the comments, not that anyone will look at this!
Bye.

2012

I'm fairly drunk. Got a 27 kill streak on MW3 tonight so fuck off, that's impressive. Here's an image:

Here are some more: 2010 2011.

Happy New Year.
Bye.