Space Butt Delivery... My 2nd game jam!!

So it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything. Been busy working on some undisclosed stuff and planning the future and all that jazz.

So to recap. Colleges and myself produced a game in 2 weeks. The theme that was voted on was "Get your arse to Mars." We went head to head against the other class on campus and worked tireless on the project in 2 weeks.

I was part of the art team.. Sad to say I felt the art team could of worked more efficiently but all in all i felt the product really turned out well. I had a lot of uneasy feelings towards this and mainly the collaboration between so many people, But I was happy to be proven wrong and the product speaks for itself.

The things I worked on during this product. I designed the shed in the background, (texturing was done by another student), Designed the rocket buttons and some of the upgrade buttons. 

Be sure to check out our game and even give it a play test here.
It's been uploaded by Peter so check his other games out as well here.

Our Neat Loading Screen

Buy them Upgrades!! 

Flying Through space on our way to Mars

Preparing for our first launch!

Day 30 extra protection needed!!

Ludum Dare #33 - You are the Monster. 3 day Jam.

So over the weekend we had a game jam! Our first one ever as group that had never worked together! 2 programmers and 2 artists, We had to publish a game within 72hrs, and we did it!

The concept was just simple bomberman style game. Where you are the grim reaper and harvest souls of fallen gamers. The angel tries to save them before they reach the "game over" screen! It's a simple time based game where you have to meet the quota of souls, if you don't you lose.

All in all it was a great learning experience! Definitely in the future I'll be doing it again. I felt our group worked amazing for never having been together. I'm hoping that in the coming weeks we decide to polish this up and make it truly 100% complete.

Our members were
Mark: Blog Link
Max: Blog Link
Peter: Blog Link
& Myself

be sure to have a look at their work!

And more importantly have a play of our game here 

Gui Health Bars

Did a quick excerise in class on how to make a GUI health bar. I'd recently played around with the new Unity 5 canvas and UI element. But learning to do it really fast using photoshop and simple hardened bevel and emboss. All in all really great concept.

I tried to design to different styles. Went with a sort of Icy look and just a stock standard metallic and simple style. 

Holiday Muck Around

During the holiday's I got a little unproductive and started playing games and fun stuff again, mainly just due to being severely burnt out. I always loved the story and concept of Arthas and the Lich King. So I decided to draw him as best as I could using the Lich King Cinematic as reference. I've been working slowly on this piece for the better part of 3 months I reckon. I really wanted to do it faster but at the same time I wanted to do it justice.

I found it extremely difficult to compare something 2d like a painting and use a 3d cinematic as reference but i persisted with it. I think i screwed the sword and shoulder hard thou but all in all i'm pretty happy with how this turned out.

I would of loved to done a background but at the same time, I just want to move on and do some more things and maybe I'll come back to it and do it even more justice.

3d Gui Element.

Did an in class exercise turning a logo from the internet, to a vector based 3D element. Basically showing how these can be generated really fast for either splash art, load screen and other good various stuff. Started out using Illustrator and Vector Traced the element then, took it into Maya and extruded the elements.

From there we gave it some nice delta and some specular to make it look interesting in Z-brush as well as finishing it in Photoshop with a high pass filter to bring it to life. 

All in all the exercise is great workflow and great way to produce something for a game.

Potato Man Render.

Here you can see the controllers so that I don't mess with the rig and break it!! 

                 The constraints in the right picture affect the movement. ^_^           

Just a quick snap of my character for my game. With some nice lighting affects. 

With this rig had to use multiple techniques, from pole vectors to double IK joints to make the legs work to how i wanted. All in all I'm pretty happy with my first rig and model. Hoping to pushing my skills with the next couple of rigs and models I make. 

Face Animation and Rigging

Gui and Face Rigging with the Root Structure.

Been a little while since last blog, been busy developing ideas for my game. Doing an excess of a pixar-esque face animation. It's a pretty simple excess. I find rigging almost second nature and it's literally all about good joint placement and good topology.

Next step skinning weight and joint orientation to the Gui.