Choices

Hi! Today I thought of posting a few of my life drawing sketches that I have been doing throughout the year.

I love life drawing, it is the most pure form of art and I believe that to become a great artist I should never stop drawing from real life. At the end of the day if all the fancy software is removed all that remains are the core traditional art skills.

This year is happening way faster than I expected and I am still undecided on what to specialize. Now is the time to go look for internships and work experience and I want to do it....the thing is that I don't know what position I want to apply for. I don't feel like I am very good at anything in particular which makes me frustrated, the last thing I want is to be average.

I really enjoy drawing people, it is something that comes natural to me. I suppose the fact that all I've drawn most of my life are humans has made me good at it. I feel that character artist is the way to go for me but something in the back of my mind makes me doubt it.

For now I'll just continue to learn and improve both my 2D and 3D skills and hopefully things will become easier when I reach my final year at DMU.

See you soon,

Carla.

Alice's adventures off the map!

Hello everyone! The competition I have been waiting for a year has begun! Gamecity and the British Library have set in motion the 3rd Off the map competition. Using the 125th anniversary of the original Alice in wonderland, they've come up with an awesome competition for this year!

Our university has gained a lot of popularity thanks to this competition and we have high standards they expect from us. Pudding Lane productions did a fantastic job at recreating London during the period of the great fire but we are determined to do better than them!

The competition is made of three themes:

Oxford
Gardens
Underground

At first we were told to come up with a side scroller game and I kind of liked the idea, but in the end the tutors let us do what we thought more suitable for this project.

Our first thoughts were to do a stylized game with textures similar to Victorian illustrations. In the end we decided to go for a more realistic approach. We wanted something that would appeal to everybody, we wanted to create a game but also a learning experience.

In the end we decided to recreate Oxford during the Victorian era and link it to Lewis Carroll's owns views of the city. We would include specific areas where Carroll took inspiration for his famous Alice and wonderland books.

The idea is simple, you explore Oxford looking for clues (book pages) and learn about the book and how it related to real life. The level repeats itself, in other words, once you get to the end point you get teleported back to the beginning. The difference though is that the environment is changed. The weather changes, the buildings change and the experience is different. Our goal is that as the player collects the pages of the book it gradually gets teleported into the actual Alice in wonderland world.

This is the basic layout of our level.

As well as collecting the pages, we plan on adding more interactions to make the overall gameplay a lot more interesting.

I was appointed character artist for this project and my job at the moment is to concept model and animate a white rabbit which will guide the player through the level.

I first started with a couple of studies of rabbits and then I created my own rabbit running pictures. I found the first row on the internet, I took it and then created the skeletal form inside it to help me visualize the movement when it comes to animating.

Since as you go through the level, everything looks more like in the books, the rabbit will change as well...

I used various references of Victorian clothing to come up with the designs for the white rabbit and then merged the best ones into one final one.

Colouring was fun. I wanted to use bold and contrasting colors so that it would look a bit surreal. In the end the green suit seemed to be the one which stood out for most people so I decided to base my final concept on that color combination.

And here's my version of the white rabbit. I think the pink eyes make him look a bit evil but I made his face and overall shape kind of round to imply that he is a good guy.

And..this is it for today. Next post I'll talk about our group trip to Oxford and Cheshire cat concepts!

See you soon!


P.S. Jonah has been very nice to set up a group blog called The flaming dodo where we all post our progress and developments on the project.

flaming dodo productions (Link)

Container city project: Postmortem

Hello!

Container city is done and it's time to go back and review how it went.

I really enjoyed working on this project as it turned out pretty nice! I got along with everyone on my group which made us a productive team.
We didn't communicate much which was no good in terms of keeping up with assets. At one point I didn't know who was doing what.

We had a strong idea from the beginning and we made sure certain elements would stay the same throughout our level. We worked at a steady pace, without rushing anything which means we managed to finish everything on time. Perhaps if had worked a bit faster we could have included some stretch goals like the wrecked ship behind the altar.

We all started on by concepting the different rooms and then we split into different roles. Callum took most of the engine work. Braden and I were in charge of most of the assets and Johannes did some engine work (particle effects) as well as some props.

I felt quite comfortable working with them but as in any group project, there were certain things I wanted to look in a specific way but I had to respect my team mates and reach a middle ground with them.
I feel that a bit more organization would have benefited our final outcome. We didn't really have a schedule when we would meet or how many hours we would spend in labs. We would just drop assets into google drive and then help Callum put them into the level.

In this project I felt that I could speak up and that my ideas would be heard better than any previous group projects. It gave me more confidence and I want to keep having a noticeable input on future group work.

The tutors were happy with our level, they thought it was something original but they wanted to see more of the relationship between the ship wreckage and the tribal world. I am overall very pleased and it amazes me how much one can create when working in a team. So far I have been quite lucky with my team mates. I have always been with a nice group and I hope it stays this way!

Next project is the Off the map competition sponsored by Gamecity and the British Library. It'll be an awesome project to work on! All I know is that I've been put in a really good team and we've got a really good idea but I'll talk about that on another post!

See you soon!

Once upon a tropical island

Hello everyone! This week has been pretty busy and finally our container city is finished!
I have been focusing on making props and texturing since we needed to populate our level!

Making the statue took me longer than I expected. I usually model humans in a T pose but this figure was sitting and it took me a while to get the shape for the legs right. There was no point in rigging it so that it could sit down since it would not be moving.

I used Zbrush to add a little detail and I textured it in Photoshop.

I also worked on a shield but it looks better in 3Ds max than it does in engine...It's probably due to the resolution of the texture.

I have also been working on foliage and rocks to dress our level, it helps create a nice organic feel.

Next post will be a postmortem of this project. I will be going into detail about this project as well as including pretty pictures of our level.

 Right now I am just happy it's over and I am already excited for the Off the map competition!

See you soon!

Carla.

It's all about the detail

Hello! This week has been pretty stressful, I've had a lot of things in my mind as well as the container city project but I think I'll dedicate a different post to talk about my inner turmoil.

So...detail,yes, this week I have been working on textures.

The stairs were the first asset I textured and I have to say I spent a good amount adding detail to them, specially the metal boxes. They look pretty realistic in engine which I am very proud of. Seems like PBR texturing is getting easier as the year progresses.

Then I moved onto the first room of our level. I spent pretty much a whole day texturing this and even though I am happy with the way it looks, I feel that I shouldn't have spent that much time. Most of the items in the room are small assets and therefore they don't need much detail...

Also, I have been working on the concepts for the statues near the shrine.

I wanted something fairly simple but that looked interesting. The idea is that as the player walks towards the altar, the bowl that the statues hold will catch fire.

This is my final concept which I will start modelling tomorrow.

Our level is progressing quite well, what worries me is that it's only two in my group in charge of the props and I am afraid we might not be able to fully populate our level...We need to meet up and evaluate our level. We only have a week left and we really need to prioritize.

See you soon!

Container city project

Hello! This week has been pretty stressful and yesterday's presentation didn't go as well as I expected. We pitched our project to the critical studies team and they struggled to see what we were trying to produce.

Our level it's still pretty rough and the fact that some of our ideas needed polishing made our project confusing.

We wanted to blend the modern day era with the tribal one by mixing objects that the native people living in our island might have found inside the ship. This seemed to confuse every single teacher and the CS team was no exception.

I feel we should just stick to tribal theme and use the containers as infrastructure but it's a group project after all...

This is the structure of our level. The idea is that the player would start at the lower room and make his/her way up to the surface.

The first room is the dungeon, dark and hostile. As the player progresses, light will start to peek into the cave through the ceiling until the player reaches the end. There are are 4 rooms plus the Altar room, therefore we decided to do one room each and work on the altar together.

I chose to concept the guard chamber and after a few attempts I had the look for the room. As we were concepting, Callum and Johannes spent some time figuring out particle effects and interactions in unreal.

 We keep track of our work in this excel document via Google drive. We also have a Facebook group were we post our progress and give each other feedback.

My work this week has been to create assets:

I made two sets of stairs for our level mixing primitive stone stairs with boxes from the containers to make that link between the natives and the ship wreckage. They were all separate objects put together and unwrapping took me a lot of hours to finish but I am happy it's done.

Our level has got a lot of sand, specially on the lower levels, with that in mind I did a sand floor in Zbrush for the dungeon area which I think I have to tweak because it's too thick.

I have also been doing some organic bits like tree roots and vines that will creep through the ceiling. And today I modelled and unrwapped the assets on the guard's room. I was true to my concept apart from one or two things that I added as I went along.

And this was our level just before yesterday's presentation. The main worry the teachers had, is that we made it very organic and the point of using containers was to map out the structure of our levels very quickly so we would spend most of our time creating the assets inside the containers.

I feel confident we can make a really good level as long as everyone works hard and we get things done moderately quickly.

So far I have been getting along quite well with my group mates, the down side is that we don't communicate as much I'd like to and it's hard to make decisions together. Sometimes I have to repeat my point a few times for them to get it.  They are very nice to work with though, which makes me less stressed about this whole project.

See you soon!


Carla.

What to do with a container?

Hello, I'm back and Happy new year to you all!

My Christmas holidays were a bit busy and yet kind of relaxing. I barely had time to focus on my own work due to my family constantly requiring my attention. Specially my 6 year old sister...

Anyways, I'm back at Uni which means stress, lack of sleep and cheap food once again. First project this semester is a group project...I don't mind group projects, I kind of like them as long as I end up with a good group but they always let us pick the groups and everyone ends up teaming up with their friends and I have to go search for someone who doesn't have a team yet...

The project is about building a small level out of shipping containers. They don't need to be the exact containers, we can change it to fit with our chosen themes. The only rule is that it has to be a closed space. It also has to have 2 or 3 interactive elements in it.

They gave us two themes to choose from: Dystopian or Sci-fi or a mix of both.

We decided to give ourselves 10 min to come up with ideas and pick the one we liked the most. In the end we decided to go with a dystopian scenario.

Our first idea was an island populated by a tribe who took containers from a shipwreck and built a temple with them.

As we were creating our mood boards we decided to make an underground level that leads to a shrine. We thought of incorporating objects that they found inside the containers as well as the ship. Things like technological equipment, artifacts, furniture etc.

I did some rough level designs and as I was creating them I thought of the idea of having a prisoner who wants to escape from this place.

In the end we decided to go with the design number 6 because it was a nice maze-like shape. The rest of the team members liked the idea of the prisoner and so we decided to go down that route.

I did some concepts of the dungeon (where the player will start) just so we would agree on the atmosphere for the level.

We wanted to have lots of sand, some foliage as the player makes his way to the surface and water as it reaches the end of the level. Rooms would be predominantly dark except from a few beams of light that would peek through the cracks on the ceiling.

We have done a rough block out of our level in 3D and we're now focusing on concepting the different rooms on the level. We're excited for this project and if we manage to make it just the way we want it'll look amazing!

That's all for now, see you soon!

Carla.