20,000 VIEWS!!!

 Sometime yesterday we hit 20,000 views! What's even better is that the second 10,000 took half the time to get as the first. Hopefully that will continue to be the case. There's no revamp like last time unfortunately as  I can't be bothered and think it looks good enough at the moment.

I really love having the Blogodile here to promote myself and my work and I actually do have fun coaxing poos out of it, I just wish I had more time to focus on it consistently. I'm going to put a lot more effort into promoting the blog via Twitter and Facebook from now on.

In other new I'm currently helping Rory out again with some design stuff for an app he and a few of his friends are making so will be posting some of that soon.

And of course, the big one.

Congo War Child.

I'm currently working on getting a gameplay video together in celebration of reaching 20,000 views.

The mechanics are all in place but most of the current art is place-holder and there are no animations so I don't want to turn people away from it because it looks shit.

Here's a screenshot of the game in it's current form as some evidence that I'm actually doing something:

CWC is the piece of work my main focus is on at the moment and I'm intending for it to stay that way until it's done (mainly to prove to myself that I can see a bigger project all the way through).

Anyway thanks for reading.

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

5000 views! LannyBoom! Skyway!

 Enormous Blogodile has reached 5000 views!

 Following on from the previous post about the pixel drawings I did for Lanny here's some extra stuff.

The night before his grad show performance he asked me to do a few images of his head with different mouth shapes so that it could be animated in real time as he spoke into the mic during his master of ceremonies slots.

Here they are:

 It was very funny when Lanny's mac crashed twice during his performance :D but otherwise it was great, as was the rest of the show. Here's some footage of it taken on my phone. It's not great quality but you should get the idea:

 And here's some proper footage of it filmed by people who can use a camera:



 Also we've finished our 12 weeks of production on Skyway for uni. We've got a demo trailer coming soon but there's a fair bit of new stuff on our indieDB page (http://www.indiedb.com/games/skyway). So check it out! bye

Skyway update 25th April 2011 EXTRA!

 We've been doing a lot of stuff in UDK over the past few weeks, working out some of the different gameplay      elements such as moving water cubes, putting in a skybox, checkpoints etc. It's all very important stuff but unfortunately there's not much to show of it, but here's a screenshot of the skybox in engine. It looks really close as there are no distance markers and the sun is slightly too big:

 But anyway here's some more interesting stuff. I finished rigging and weight painting Oscar. It's not perfect but it needs to be out of the way so it'll do for now. Here he is posed:

 We've also been working on prop assets to decorate the pier and it's surroundings. Here are some potted bushes:

 A lovely welsh daffodil:

 A life ring (not finished):

 and a pair of beach umbrellas:

 Not much else for Skyway really, any other stuff is on our indiedb and/or facebook page so check them out :)
 In other news I've started trying to model Simon and Lewis from the Yogscast as I'm thinking about animating a few short segments from the Yogpod in 3D as they attract a lot of attention on Youtube and could be good promotion for EB. Also it's all good practice for modelling, facial rigging, character design and other stuff.
 So here's Simon's head so far:

 The new Doctor Who started on Saturday and was great. I'm not sure if everyone picked up on the Easter Island joke but I thought it was very funny. Really like Matt Smith's Doctor.

Bye

3D Glasses for Tom

 Tom asked me to model some 3D glasses in Maya for his advertising FMP website. Here's the model with the different designs (created and textured by Tom):



 The arms can fold in as well but you can't see that here. It didn't take too long to model but I did smooth it a lot which, it turns out, makes unwrapping UVs a fair bit more complicated. Tom's happy with them though and he's paying me with vodka so it's all good.

 Tom's behance: http://www.behance.net/TomGriffiths

BYE

I've been modelling boxers for Paul...

 Yes that's right, I've been making a 3D model of a boxer for Paul and his final project.
It's fairly low poly I think (just over 1100 faces). I made it following a great tutorial on body modelling on Youtube and it took me two sittings which I'm pretty pleased with.
 I've also textured them with two colour schemes (a black guy with black shorts and a white guy with blue) and done a basic rig and weight painting.

 Anyway here are some shots of the boxers posed and with greyscale variants of the original textures:

 

 

 I'm pleased with them and hopefully they'll help Paul with his work.

Bye. 

Skyway Update 15th March 2011

 So basically since last time we have been building our characters. There are four characters in our demo and four of us so we modelled one each. I took Oscar, Rich took Mr. Docherty, Ollie took Hooch and Ben was given Mrs. Docherty.

 Here's the finished model of Oscar with his texture applied: 

 And here are the UV and Diffuse maps, I'm pretty pleased with the unwrapping, especially on the head, but there were a few mistakes I noticed on the way:

 With our style the character's are mainly block colours but I added a painted hair texture and subtle cotton and denim textures on the clothes to make it a bit more interesting.

 Next we started rigging our characters following some amazing tutorials and below you can see the rigged Oscar with its controls. Just need to paint the weights and do some blend deformers for facial animation:

 Also we've been making a bit more progress with getting things into UDK. Here's Oscar (with collision) and a non-opaque water cube that you can swim through:  

 You can see the other characters at our indiedb profile as well as other stuff.

That's all for now. BYE.

Craig's Direct Line Viral Phone

 Tuesday and Thursday this week I have been doing some 3D modelling for my mate Craig. He is doing Advertising Design and making a Direct Line Youtube viral ad for a project.
 I modelled the iconic red phone while Sooth Efricon Craig modelled the more recent red mouse (with some help from me :D) and is going to do the animation.
 Anyway here are some renders of the model. It's not very economical with polygons but otherwise I'm very pleased with it:

 Let me know what you think. OK. Thanks. bye

Day 28 (Draw Anything)

A pitiful attempt at an "animation" for yesterday:

Day 28 (Draw Anything) from Oliver Elliott on Vimeo.
More like a slightly moving image really...
Based on the superb interpretation of "draw anything" by Rory.
Again created using only PS and WMM.
Last day tomorrow thank fuck :)
bye

Day 18 (Just a Doodle)

After the runaway worldwide success of Day 16 I did another animation:

Day 18 (Just a Doodle) from Oliver Elliott on Vimeo.
You're welcome.
Veteran Blogodile fans will remember the Super Mario image from the early days (http://theenormousblogodile.blogspot.com/2010/01/itsa-me.html).
Bit of an audio glitch at one point by the sound of it but plllllllp.
Days 19 and 20 up laterz.
Bye

Day 16 (Inspiration)

An animation!!!!! wooohoooo!!!

Day 16 (Inspiration) from Oliver Elliott on Vimeo.

I did this using Photoshop and Windows Movie Maker with a tiny bit of Painter. Unfortunately I haven't got any other video editing software on my laptop nor have I got Flash.
I could easily spend weeks on Flash making simple stuff like this that goes on for ages. I guess I had plenty of time to make it longer but this is all I wanted to present.
Don't think there's anything else to say...
buy

104th Post!!!! OMG!!!

Here's a WIP video of the intial drawing of Emma Watson that I made to see if I could. I had to use Windows Movie Maker in the end because Image Ready wasn't allowing me to save as a GIF. Turned out to be a lot quicker and easier at the loss of a small amount of picture quality.
Now I know how to I'll hopefully update it when I work on the picture some more.

I know using a grid is cheating a bit but it's better than tracing :D
BYE

BAck Again

Quick initial character design for Dale. Not sure about the arms at all. Had trouble deciding how they should be :/

no skills required

Quick, pointless animation I did using the plaster filter in Photoshop.
I completed Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard last night. It is by far the shittest game I have played for a very long time. Mine and Steve's running commentary/analysis would have most hopefully made the developers cry.
The one thing that made the process bearable was the knowledge that, should I break into the industry, there is no way I could possibly make anything as pathetic. By the end I was physically feeling sick of it, not even joking, not even exaggerating.
Luckily I got a preowned copy for a fiver and it kept crashing. When this happened I was greatly uplifted. I don't think this is the response the developers were hoping for. Nor the relief of knowing that I will never have to play it again once the credits rolled.
It's supposed to be a parody blah blah blah but it was not funny in the slightest. Never has the term "one-liner" made so much literal sense. All we heard was "This is getting riduculous" over and over and over and over and over. And over. We noticed a hundred, if not more, missed opportunities for humour or commentary on video games whilst playing through, none of which were realised.
I did watch the credits, purely to make a mental hitlist of the fucking idiots. I noticed to my unsurprise that there were only two memebers of the testing department.
It's been almost 12 hours and I'm still wound up by the game. Characters using variations of quotes from Die Hard and Star Wars in the final boss battle got to me the most.
There were some cut-scene sections set in "the real world", but they weren't, they were CG as well. How. Fucking. Stupid. Can. You. Get????????? Surely it would be far cheaper, not too mention far more engaging and funny, to just have live action scenes. JESUS.
Seriously Vicious Cycle never make a game again. I know it said Matt Hazard will return... but don't you fucking dare.
BYE.

Interaction

I went to a cross course meeting today about a chance to work with people from other courses on a project during the upcoming reading weeks.
I am now part of a group with Charlotte from my class and two Matts from Film and Video (1st year I think).
The idea is to produce a potentially multimedia piece based on the them of interaction.
We bounced around a few ideas before settling on a looping relay with one live action character, one cgi character and one 2D character.
I am going to be doing the 3D character in Maya, while Charlotte does the flash animation and the boys deal with the live action stuff and directing and editing etc I guess.
I think I am going to use my Okami/Tekken character I drew a while ago as he is shaped quite simply and, I think, expresses a fair bit of character in his design:
Hopefully this will turn out to be a good portfolio piece and a bit of fun at least.

Also in other major news: last night I decided to do a digital sketchbook because I need to practise on the wacom and I never bother with a paper sketchbook. Not gonna write any moreBYE.

Final Cut FMV

Here's our trailer. Unfortunately compressed rather a fucking lot due to things. Mainly ones I don't understand.
Pretty pleased with it. Music is 'Police in Helicopter' by Congo Natty and Topcat.
So the game idea:
Melvin is a mouse that can turn into an old man. He lives in a big ol' house on top of a huge indestructable pole with only his magical flying pet tiger Sihir for company. When he got Sihir, Melvin mistakenly thought he was a Sumatran tiger so gave him an Indonesian name, he is in fact a Bengal tiger.
Melvin never leaves his home, not because he likes being lonely but because he likes being human, which he can only do in his house.
One day Melvin hears some very loud and irritating sawing coming from below his house. He discovers the noise is coming from a mysterious hooded figure sawing at the base of his pole.
Quite content with his lonliness Melvin is rather annoyed, as you would be, at both the noise and the Hooded Figure's apparent intentions of getting him to come down. Nevertheless he decides to ignore the fruitless sawing (the pole is indestructable remember), mainly by playing his favourite jungle music really loud to drown out the noise, and carry on writing his diaries as normal. That is until He realises Hooded Figure has hired some animal minions to go out into the world to retrieve a set of fabled 'supersaws' which will cut through Melvin's indestructable pole like, well like a normal pole.
So now it's up to Melvin to travel, as a mouse, with Sihir across the world in an attempt to find the supersaws before Hooded Figure's minions so he can live out the rest of his life as a happy recluse.
We haven't thought about the Hooded Figure's identity too much as it wasn't particularly relevant to the trailer and maybe if there was a game it wouldn't even need to be revealed. However we had an idea that it was a woman who, when she was little and before Melvin found the house that enabled him to transform into a human, used to go adventures with him. She is trying to get Melvin down as she doesn't like him be alone and, more importantly, thinks that life as a human isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when you're lonely.
So, as I've mentioned before, depending on your point of view, the game's win and lose scenarios' roles are potentially reversed. The game over screen will be Hooded Figure successfully getting Melvin out of the house and completion will be him living out his life as a lonely human. I think this could be an interesting take on games' outcome scenario and how the interactive elements of the medium could affect play and story. BYE.

First Year Maya Project (Primitive Theatre)

Roy is trying to build a wall and Andy's supposed to be helping but instead he's playing on his game boy.
Did this last year with Pete and Ben. We were really pleased with it apart from the sound which got heavily criticised. If the files still exist I'd like to have a go at polishing it off, mainly with the camera work, some of the animation and obviously the sound , as I reckon it will be a good portfolio piece.

Some textured Maya stuff (more on the way)

Inside the robot baddie.

Hooded figure with its big saw.

Maya work so far

Some screenshots of some of the work I've been doing in Maya for our trailer project. None of them have been textured yet. And this isn't all of them...

Melvin's house outside.

Melvin's house inside.

The mysterious Hooded Figure.

A Hedgehog minion.

A Gorilla minion that the hedgehog will be riding.

Trailer Project

I'm currently working with Rich to produce a 30 second trailer for a game concept we have created. Ours is being done mainly in Maya with elements of hand drawn animation, if all goes to plan. [Just seen on the news that a British man was executed in China for drug trafficking heehee I couldn't care less why is this news?] I really like working in Maya. I got a cracked version of 2009 on my laptop [lol dead soldiers on the news] but for some reason it only shows half the workspace, the rest is just plain grey, any help on resolving this would be much appreciated. I've got it running properly on my home PC over Christmas despite it taking about half an hour to open.
Well this blog has already become incredibly boring. Anyway our game has been developed from a basic idea I had at GameCity Squared and has turned out to be quite hard to explain [man shoots daughter :)] concisely but basically it's an action adventure game about a man called Melvin who can turn into a white mouse and his magical tiger Sihir. I hope it turns out well and does itself justice . Maybe I'll do some updates on here. Offer me a job when I finish uni, that's why I'm writing this after all.