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

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.

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

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

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.

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. 

Mein Kraften

 I have spent a significant amount of the last couple of days watching a series of videos about the game Minecraft by Yogscast on Youtube. They are very funny on the face of it but also tell a superb and unique story of discovery set in the world of Minecraft as well as introducing the game to people, like me, who aren't/weren't aware of the depth of the game and all it has to offer.
 The videos have already sold the game to Pete and Rich and I think I might be making a purchase soon. It's hard to say much without spoiling both the videos and the game itself so I really recommend watching them. I must have lost about ten hours watching them over the past two days and I'm not close to bored yet.

 Anyways here's the links:
The first series starts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UdEFmxRmNE
And the "Survival Island" series starts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcsN3d7eKgY

 There are more videos after this but it's best to watch them in order otherwise some parts won't make sense. Genuinly impressed and haven't seen any video game commentary (if that is what it is) this good before. It's like a culmination of contemporary media: video games, youtube, podcasts, comedy, tv series and plenty more. Glad it's got so many views and so much positive feedback it's just a shame about all the adverts...

 Enjoy. BYE  

Update: If you're put off by the adverts and using Google Chrome (which you should be) install the AdBlock extension and it will save you a lot of grief.

You what?

The Enormous Blogodile is now on the Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/EnormousBlogoVision.
It's like a lower quality vimeo at the moment but it could be used for different stuff later on.

I've put a thing on the top right of the blog with links to all the other blogodile caves and my email address for if you want to email me an email. I've also added a load of other unnecessary shit which you might have noticedbye