Anyway stop talking bollocks. First lets recap the term, starting where I left off.
So I finished my forth character of the bunch and two background concepts, as I said in my last post, and on top of that I completed pretty much everything else that I said I needed to do, disregarding baddies (I settled for one little sketch that i'd done, and noone seemed to mind. Apart from Justin? He wanted more baddies lol.). My Powerpoint was fairly standard, although I can never help but make everything just how I like it. I was really happy with my design bible when it was finished and all printed up. Forgiving some very minor printing errors and the fact I needed the pages stuck together, it looked pretty sharp and the effort that i'd put in paid off. I don't mind a nice bit of graphic design. Although my stuff is relatively basic, it interests me somewhat. Also, during this process I learnt more about photoshop brushes and making your own, which was cool. Onto pitches.
I thought my initial pitch with Andy was alright, but that's probably because he's too nice to us :P so I was vaguely confident about the real pitch, but I came away from it kind of disappointed. I was happy that it was all over, but it left a slightly unpleasant taste in my mouth. I felt my delivery was sort of cold, a little too nervous and a bit of a mess, but when I got the written feedback from Andy and Sarah?? Terrible memory sorry, It really helped me figure some things out and I think my next pitch will be a million times better for it.
The BBC lady thought my idea was too complicated for what it was, and after a second of disagreement after being told this, it all made sense and I realised that all that crap about the war didn't need to be contained in my pitch at all. What i should have done was talk solely about the kids, their surroundings, and be really passionate about the whole thing. Not go off on some tangent about stuff that wouldn't even have been in the show like the big baddy.
I believe this confusion on my part was because I had originally planned what is now the last episode (where they kill the 'bots and everyone's shocked and they're whisked away to be cadets or whatever) to originally be the first episode, and the rest of the series being their adventures outside the cube. If you follow. I'm not proof reading this crap.
Anyway, that's enough about the personal project. In summary: It was fun, I really enjoyed the process and being given loads of time to do whatever I wanted with. I'm fond of some of my characters and through this task I think I have a better idea of time management, improved skillz and I think my future pitches will benefit greatly.
Just realised this is gonna be a looooooooooong post. Noone will read this :P
EXETER PR0JECT!
This project got a little lost in the grand scheme of things as far as my participation goes, sadly. I really would've liked to have had more of a hand in things, and it's not like I didn't offer myself up for as many parts as I thought I could handle. I said i'd be part of the 3D team and the background design team, but noone ever approached me after the initial meeting about anything background related. I was all up for it at the start, but i'm not going to lie because i'm sure if I had talked to Alex, Mike or anyone else on the team I'm sure I could've got myself a part in it, but that's such a hard thing to do when you already have your hands full with a personal project.
The only thing that I got given in the end was the clock tower in 3D. No pictures because of those nobs in the media store who took my hard drive off me (Wtf is the point of a hard drive you can only keep in one place???? grr) This was way harder than I expected, but I fumbled my way through it and after plenty of pain I finally got it done. I really think it helped improve my knowledge of maya quite substantially. I'm glad I did it. Texturing too. While being really gay, it helped me learn a bit.
That's all the term stuff covered I believe, now onto something i've been doing in my spare time. This guy!
Probably doesn't look much, but a considerable amount of effort has gone into him. This is actually his second incarnation, I pretty much completely did his head then decided it was all wrong, so i've started again and this is where I am. I'm having fun making him, but it's taking me a long, long time.
I'm becoming more and more aware that in industry, maya's used very little ...if at all in making Hi-poly models. I'm gonna continue to make this guy in Maya, just so that I can learn more skills and stuff, but I really want to start getting to terms with Zbrush and a workflow which will enable me to create models just like companies would make when creating a game. (Here's an amazing link where a pro character artist has sculpted an awesome hi-poly model in zbrush and converted it to a low poly game character. I feel this is ultimately what I should be progressing towards, although to be honest i'm not completely sure this is how it's done, I still have a slightly naive outlook on the business crud.)
Blerg anyway. I can't really think of anything else work wise, and this is a huge post so i'll start wrapping up.
I've had a few ideas for little projects in the future, and i'll post em here in case I forget one day. Firstly i've thought of a fun idea for a hack n' slash game, (which would never work as a real game due to copyright issues, but awesome to work on I think) it'd be sort of a parody of every famous computer game out there. The enemies and bosses would be characters from existing computer games, i'd think up some ridiculous plot and completely construe what the characters are actually like. Lots of in-jokes and sillyness, but for one I think it'd be awesome fun redesigning and ruining the classic and current computer game characters, and fits perfectly into a project on the work side of things. I could make concepts and models, it'd be great or something. Hmm.. I did have more ideas but thinking of them again they aren't up to much. I guess that's my only idea for now.
The very last thing I want to talk about (yay!) is what I want to learn. Sam Pascizzle recently bought into an online Gnomon event, and was ridiculously kind enough to lend me his account to get in on the goods too. Thanks again! Burying myself in these videos has sent me a bit nuts and I can't stop thinking of what I want to, and what I NEED to learn if I want to make a living for myself doing things I love. Of late I haven't been sketching as much as I was at the start of the term. It's sad but my job just took all my free time away from me, and what little time I had I spent relaxing. Hopefully next term i'll have enough money so that I don't have to work and can get back to really learning as hard as I can.
Things I want:
---To have a strong knowledge of anatomy. Incredibly important. I've found after picking up the pencil again, I remember that I feel like I don't know the body well enough to draw what I want to freely. I can't let myself just draw characters most of the time because I just get caught up on the figure, and I can't let myself just draw shoddy shapes. I want a really strong understanding of the figure which will allow me to really get into just drawing the characters without having to worry about the technicalities. I'd love to have someone teach me about this, I find it very difficult to learn by myself. My plan right now is to draw as much as I can over Christmas, and if i'm still as motivated when I get back to uni i'll go to the library and see if they have any good books which will help me out.
---To learn the ins and outs of Maya, and to be able to create models of all levels of detail. I think I just need to make more models. But do I spend forever creating highly detailed things in Maya or should I just do the base models in Maya and send them to Zbrush and push my skills in that? These questions probably won't ever get answered.
There're more but they aren't as important. Basically these are the two things in my work life right now. 3D and 2D. Digital 2D too but I understand that somewhat, and I know the only thing I can do to progress there is to do more and more paintings. But those two puzzles are what's bugging me right now. Anatomy and 3D stuff in general. And splitting my time up between them is hard. Everything's hard. I'm worried about how little time we have left until we're thrown out into the business world, and I really hope that what's left of university will give me the time and the oppurtunity to further my skills to a place which will allow me to go into work where I want to work! I want to be a concept artist/character artist/character modeler but i've a long long way to go. WORKMOREWORKMOREWORKMOREDRAWWWWWWWWWWW
definitely been writing for too long. I had 62% for this term by the way. I think that's about right. I don't agree that the exeter project was made for advanced maya stuff though.
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