Honours Project: Classic level 3 and the abduction of hybrid

Hello again,

So today was a rather slow day which begun with what could be considered a fail....

So I shall start with the bad,

So in my calender I had these 3 days to get my 3D pixel art 'Hybrid' style stuff done, however 7 hours into the day and I had made or atleast felt like I had made no real dent into the first level of the style, this led onto the consideration in negating the style from my project altogether so i shall discuss why in greater detail....

(this section could probably be considered personal developement)

So in the first level (space) I was wanting the planet to revolve, which would be a very easy and obvious way of showing the third dimension.

I finally managed to figure out 3ds maxs toon shading nad getting it implemented so that the render would render out a rough outline of 1 pixel thick. (instead of having to put one in completely by hand)

this saved me (some) time i think however the outline still needed cleaned up and textures needed to still be fixed pre rendered, I was trying to find a good medium between a really fast jerky turn around and a super smooth turn around and ended up with 24 however at about quarter of the way through endlessly zooming in and fixing an outline just because it moved a pixel or so from the previous line was taking far too much time for no reward.

Now this time could be used to make other styles better for example the stylised levels animations more fluid, 

I am not ethusiastic as being a 3D artist so i dont see it being dentrimental to me in the future, and hybrid can stay as a part of my dissertation to look into further.

I have emailed ryan to hear what he thinks hopefully he agrees, it would be nice being able to focus on other styles more and doing something that enjoy more...as i think Hybrid style alone would be too much to get done in the 2 or so weeks untill submission...

Anyways.....

So moving on... I got to work at doing the levels for the Classic style.

Classics main advancement over vintage is the inclusion of more colours and this is the bit that i wanted to show in my levels.

level 3 - spritesheet

Original size: 16x16 special (64x64)

 Idle

Jump

Punch

Special

So along with more detail added to the character i added more detail into the animations, most notably the hair.

as always if you got something to say about anything in this post feel free to leave a comment...

honours project : sylised levels

So heres what i have done the previous two days,

been getting both levels done or close to finish for the stylised section, this along with Hybrid will prob take me the longest time so i thought it would be good getting it done ASAP.

so yeah pictures to the FACE!!

So leading on from my previous post of the pixelboy or level 3 in the stylised stage, i got to adding animation along with a little change to his appearance

Lvl 3 - Close up

So first up the grass ball has a face, i did this because i wanted the spritesheet to be more visually appealing and since the idle animation for the boy was only at 2 frames i thought i would do something else.

so heres it all moving

Ok for some reason bloggers having a hard time with this animation and the first frame of the boy seems to stick but i can assure you that isnt the case.

I understand the grass ball's yawn could do with more frames to make it look more fluid. but photoshop is a fiddly so and so when it comes to animation and i didnt want to spend more time on him (i might go back later) but im on a strict schedule so that i can get this done on time so i couldnt hang around..

this leads onto level 2 stuffs...

Level 2: stylised landscape

Stylised level 2 : sprite sheet level 2

so yeah details of the trees is more defined i put in some animation to make it more pleasing to look at.

but yeah took me a while to get the general look I didnt want to go as high resolution as i did for the boy because there was too much to do. im perticularly impressed with the trees the detail in the bush worked out pretty damn well..

the city side is more dynamic mainly becuase i thought it was rather simplistic so wanted to jazz it up a bit.

so along with these and my space level,

level 1 space

thats all the levels from stylised ready (missing a few things here and there ofocurse)

so thats what i have for today, what do you all think.. drop a comment and leave some feedback please :D

Honors Checklist

Honours Project: stylised character

Hey guys..

So i had a meeting with ryan today to show what i have done and things went pretty positively he liked what i had and thought everything was more interesting

when we were discussing if i had time to do animations and everything for every style and at every level we thought this might not be realistic.

However today i have been working on the more modern day style of pixel art.

using the character i showed in the last post i imagined what he may look like with more pixels and colours,

So here he is in all his glory, I think he looks pretty damn cool, the amount i have improved this year in my technique and pixel art is crazy.

first attempt

second attempt

as i am sure you will agree this guys far more eyecatching to look its funny looking back as i never thought i improved that much. but anyways think i shall show how i made him?

first up using the umage of the character from vintage i took some key aspects such as his squarish figure and simplistic design such as his arms and legs and tried to make it more eyecatching by adding hair and other accessories.

after this I went over the rough sketch in pen and scanned it in.

I then coloured him in and made various changes to see what would best suit him

after that i scaled down the image to a more suitable resolution for pixel art at 200x200 pixels

I then went over the original outline to make a pixel art outline eliminating jaggies to make the character more clean.

basic colours were then added

highlighting and shadows followed. since this is an individual pece to make it more interesting i added in a ground for him to stand on and a basic sky gradiant.

however this brings a rather big problem since this character is more complex it will make me animating him more time consuming something of which im running really low on right now.. so i am not sure how to do this if he animates atall and is just idling ( moving up and down from respiraion and hair blowing in the wind) but yeah panic stations i have so much stuff to still to do so some clever shortcutts will have to be found to make my life easier.

honours project: Vintage style and other developements

Hello,

So after a seriously stressed out week i think i have managed to get a grasp of things and pull myself together, Ryan wasnt to impressed with what i had to show but i intend to change that for my meeting this wednesday.

So Ryan suggested that i made a checklist for each stage in my timeline, so heres what i have so far:

Space: is a picture of the planet, zooming in and you will reveal an environment

landscape: you can pan and explore the environment in that style

close up: zoom in further and youll see individual characters vehicles etc. im not exactly sure how best to display this just yet i have a few ideas.

Placer: is indication that the artwork is done but might do with a bit more work done but for now its good.

VINTAGE

So i shall show you the first style i have done, so things i kept in mind for vintage:

Colour: the colour pallette is white and or green on a black bacground reasonably low resolution 

this is my interpretation of the style so wont use the exact restrictions as I didnt want to limit myself too much.

level 1 - Space

level 2 - landscape(w/animation)

Decided to add in an enlarged so you can see it a bit better unfotunately though that means bloggers AA has blurred them too.

Level 3 - Character (idle,jump,run,punch,punch2,punchspecial)

so yeah a good work sesh today right? if you read this post please leave me feedback :D

Exposition: business cards

hey guys, for a break in my dissertation/case study writing i decided to get working on my exposition a bit. so heres what i came up with for mu business card I didnt want it to be too busy but wanted it to catch the eye:

What do you think please let me know by commenting

here is a link to the website if anyone is interested the prices dont seem too bad: 

http://www.vistaprint.co.uk

you get a free card holder too.

Supervisor meeting diary: 11/04/13

This was a different meeting from the usual, as it was a group meeting with other 4th year students and ryan discussing our dissertations. next week meetings will be back to normal and I shall back to having an agenda written out but for this week I didnt think we had too since the agenda was already decided.

Anyways,

Ryan selected Laura to be the unlucky one to read my dissertation. however it sounded from the feedback she gave at the end that it isnt going as bad as i thought in my head (despite the lack of a few things like a case study) she seemed to understand what my dissertation was talking about which was a relief. so thanks laura.

So basically i have been getting my head down on my case study.. i started one earlier on in the year but my aim may have changed to much to make it relevant anymore so im adapting/rewriting that and my critical framework (thankfully my framework was going down the same road as my aim so it shouldnt be to hard to alter) to coincide with the change of the aim.

however i feel unsure what to exactly talk about with my case study got so far as 356 words and have hit a brick wall. =/

Personal Development Portfolio: more sketches part.1

Hello,

I have also been keeping up with my sketching, and trying to further improve my pixel art. I decided to take the longer method and reteach myself things that i may forget. since im doing this very thoroughly so it will take a few posts..

so first up is the sketch to outline,

I had this in my head for a while ever since I seen the last episode of walking dead so i thought i should do it for my personal project and get all the zombie madness out of my head..

once happy with the sketch i went over it in pen to make it easier for the scanner to pick up

as you can maybe see the setting changed from the initial sketch, which had you peering through the hole of a zombies body but i thought that made no sense since daryl doesnt have a gun.

so opted with the mood in the background... next up will be converting this into a pixel art drawing

Honours Project: progress update

Hello,

My my my not posted anything for a while not good atall.

So yes I havn't vanished, and still working away on my pixel art stuff.

So last time I was talking about how ryan wanted to see how i would display my timeline.. Unhappy with the presentation powerpoint feel that timelines gave i wanted mine to be more interesting and interact with the user in some way.

I am terrible with coding however and although I could have probably struggled and conjured up something in flash. I got chatting with a coding chum over a few pints and the subject inevitably came up about my project, anyways one thing lead to another and he agreed to do all the coding for it, this would be awesome as it would save me a ton of time doing something i really don't like and put my attention to the project/dissertation writing. also with the added opertunity of being able to get my stuff on my ipad which would be great another screen for people to see my stuff at the exposition.

So a big thank you to Stuart howieson for helping me out,

so now that i have someone else i thought it would be a great idea to sketch out what i wanted and explain everything so that he could then code everything. Then everytime i complete something we can just add it in with no problems.

basic layout (of how i see it looking a at the last stage)
the dotted arrows represent being able to drag/click drag in that direction to see other planets (however this depends entirely on whether or not i have the time)
each star represents a different style click/tap on one and the style will switch to the one you selected.
second image is the story board

title screen just says pixel art style my name or some baws (might have some animation depending on time) but we will see just tap and then...

KERBLAMO! transition to the first vase is that of an explosion "big bang if you will"

vintage style: clickable stars will pulse or something when you hover of them they will say which style it will change it too so at this stage theyll only be two clickable stars vintage ( the one we are in now) and classic the next stage click/tap on it then a cool animation or something will happen...

classic style: same but theres now a new clickable star ... 

i was thinking that you could click the planet or something and that will show like the creative process of each style or more things like characters or something but i dont think al have the time for that atall.
So i have also been quickly knocking up some images of each style:

I appear to have misplaced the other styles that i have done my apologies i shall edit them in when i find them.

Quick 3D mock up still more detail needs to be added

volcano with toon shading on

volcano Texture simplistic