Presentation is everything

If there is one thing i have learnt, its that good presentation can make or break your work, and it is important to nail this issue quite early on. There I have been tasked with creating a 10 piece portfolio of my work.

For my portfolio I have created several designs, to use. (click to see larger image).

Each piece is numbered for votes, so please vote for a layout you think would work out best

Working patterns - how do you really spend you time?

Many people have different ways of working, but it is not just about how you work it also about how you organise your time. How can a person adjust there working pattern, to get the most out of the time they have to work on something?

Two weeks back I was set a task to help solve these questions, this involved making a note of the time I spent doing things for an entire week. From there I would review this and come up with a better working pattern.

Here is a quick overview of how my time was spent for a week:

15 Hours a Week –Lectures

23 Hours a week – Self Directed Study

39 Hours a week – Playing games

16 Hours a week – Other (e.g. Eating, Reading, Watching TV)

56 Hours a week – Sleeping

19 Hours a week – Unaccounted for

After looking at this I found out that I am actually only doing between 2 and 4 hours of work a day, which came as a bit of a shock because I really felt like I was doing a lot more work. I also I found that the time I spent playing games was as you can see was a little too much, every now and then I would stop working to play a game for half an hour but that never really happened, half an hour turned into an hour and so on an so forth.

I reviewed the time spent and re-planned how I should use it, and this is what I came up with

15 Hours a Week –Lectures

50 Hours a week – Self Directed Study

45 Hours a week – Game play & Other (e.g. Eating, Reading, Watching TV)

40 Hours a week – Sleeping

18 Hours a week – Unaccounted for.

Based on this I am over doubling the amount of time spent doing work, and less time is spent doing less productive things such as playing a whole 39 hours of games.

But here is a question a put to you. No matter how much to plan your time, what do you do when you are just incapable of concentrating on your work? With the reviews coming up shortly, the stress of making sure I have everything ready for it is getting to me. I feel like I have so much that I need to do, and yet I am unable to concentrate on almost anything. I think all I can say at the moment is I am looking forward to the Christmas break, I think I need it

Self Portrait - Captian of the Airhaven defences

More information to be coming soon.

Command Ship - defender of Airhaven

More Information will be coming soon

Airahven - City in the sky

For my first semester I have a three part project, to create an Environment, Vehicle, and Self portrait based on the book Mortal engines. All assets will be staged together to create an aesthetically accomplished piece.

For those of you how don’t know what Airhaven is, let me give you a brief over view. Airhaven is known as the city in the sky, and is a creation of Philip Reaves, author of Mortal Engines. In a world where resources are scarce, and cities move, you have to keep on the move to avoid being “Eaten”. To avoid the chaos of the world, the city of Airhaven decided to take to the sky, using a large number of gas balloons.

A single tier city, that floats above the world seems like an interesting starting point but the descriptions in the book are quite bland, so I don’t have much more to work with, except that it is made from a lightweight alloy metal. Initial thoughts were the street the gasbag and gondola is on. (A pub that plays a part in the story) The Landing Bay. The Dockhands Office (designed to make sure people aren’t going to create sparks or such things.)

Budget
Maximum Tri count – 20,000
Maximum Texture Size – 1024x1024
Total texture Budget – 12Mb

Programs used
3DS Max
Photoshop
Crazy bump

After some initial concepts decided to work on the landing bay. My ideas were for there to be several different docking spaces on the outer ring of the platform, with fuelling pipes. A radio tower and a stall to sell Airship parts, e.g. Engines, tools, etc.

Fuelling Station

Stall, Props and light

Completed Scene (no Textures)

Completed Scene (textured)

Diffuse and Normal Maps With Wireframe

As you can tell this scene isn't finish I need as edit some of the geometry to avoid getting some of the shadows, add the Sky dome Texture, Specular Maps, and get the Lighting to work

The world, through the eyes of Turner

One of my first projects this year is to recreate a piece of work by the ‘old masters’. For mine I decided to look at the work of Turner. Before I go on about my version of his work, I am going to take a minute to talk about his life and his work.

Let’s start from the top shall we. Turner was born in the year 1775, into an English family from London, he entered the Royal Academy of Art when hewas just fourteen, and was accepted into the academy just one year later. Turners original interests where in architecture, but he was advised to continue painting by the architect Thomas Hardwick. After only one year of study, a watercolour by turner was accepted into the Summer Exhibition of 1790, and his first oil painting known as ‘Fishermen at Sea’ was exhibited in 1796. He then exhibited at the academy for nearly every year for the rest of this life.

Turner’s style of painting is very unique, in a lot of his works he uses the oil paints almost like watercolours, this helps him to create a visually amazing pieces. John Ruskin (English Art Critic) describes Turner as the artist who could most ‘Stirringly and truthfully measures the moods of nature’.

The things that captured turners interests the most were things such as shipwrecks, fires, natural disasters, and natural phenomena,like sunlight, storms and fog. The significance of light was to turner, the emanation of gods’ spirit, this is why in his later paintings he refined the subject matter of his paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, and concentrating on the play of light on water, and the radiance of fire and the sky.

Turner’s earlier works were true to the style of English Landscape paintings such as Tintern Abby 1795 (top). However in Hannibal Crossing the Alps 1812 (bottom), his emphasis on the destructive power of nature was starting to come through.

In his later years Turner used oil paints more transparently, and focused almost all his work on the power of nature and Light. A rumour says that he had himself tied to the mast of a ship to experience the power of nature during a storm at sea. How much truth there is behind this, I have no idea, but if it is true then, I take it that’s one way to get the feel of nature.

I have taken a real liking to the style of Turners’ work, the looseness of it, and the way he shows both spectacular lighting, and the powerful force of nature. So for my piece of work I decided to do ‘Burning of Parliament’ which shows both of these aspects.

Burning of Parliament by J.M.W. Turner (1834)

Reproduction of ‘Burning of Parliament’ by S.B. Gwilliams (2009)

I could of sworn my looked better that that, yet again that's what you get for putting it right next to masters work for all to see.

This is the end! For now

That's it what can I say, the first year as a game design student has come to an end, and boy what a roller-coaster of a year it has been.

Where do i begin. Walking through the door into the labs and finding and unoccupied seat at the back of the room, awaiting the introductory lesson to begin; that was a nervous day from start to finish.

The first thing and probably the only thing that annoyed me a lot (emphasis on the word lot) was the labs were being moved and they weren't done on time, and it would be several weeks before we would have a lab. What I have got to say though is that the tutors improvised extremely well, giving us projects to test our creative skill and get a feel for what we are like.

Moving away from that, the year as a whole has been excellent, I have learnt some many techniques is art that I didn't realise, and just took them for granted, id say I have learnt a lot more in this year than in the last 3/4 years. One thing I wound really like to look at more is colour theory, and the effects of light on different surfaces and textures, to achieve maximum quality of work.

3D modelling, now that was tough, I just couldn't get to grips with it at first, if only my own 3D modelling program worked, still access to the labs till 9 at night came in very handy, the only thing i would like is to look into things with more detail, unfortunately I know that there is not enough time in the lectures to do that.

OK next, Critical Studies. Even though the classes were really quite most of the time, just listening to some of the things mike had to say were fascinating, and always gave you something new to think about, to be honest I think I blame him for the headaches I get, to much going on in there for me to be able to handle.

Overall I have gotta say that this has been one of the best years of my life, of course its had its down sides, but hay I'm still hear, and I intend to be hear next year.

For now Farewell