I thought I'd post some of the life art I did this year. I know i really need to start drawing faces on my models and just generally get quicker. I can try and be too precise with my lines which wastes time. Looking back on these i can see how i try and try out different rendering techniques to suit my style. I won't ever do a piece of life art without a black line framing the figure as I am too slow to render the whole body in that amount of time and I like lines as they hold the structure. But I will practice over the summer and see how much i improve especially with my facial rendering :)
What is creativity? To me creativity is
my life, I go about every day and I’m brought into creative situations. This
can be the most simple of things like thinking about a book I’ve read and
visualizing the characters and environments. I often escape to my mind on a
trail of mostly nonsensical thoughts. This is creative because I am constantly
thinking and switching ideas in my head. I was talking to a friend recently and
about how fantasy has intrigued us to the extreme of we make up worlds and scenarios.
I would as a child and still do now think up epic fight scenes using the elements
as a base or start from a single thought and make it into a series of events.
This is where I find dreams the purest form of creativity; you will see me go
on about dreams multiple times, especially next year. I love them as they can
have an unlimited amount of creativity with no restrictions to the real world.
The best way to describe this is to give you an example of a dream. Now I don’t
have crazy dreams all the time, only sometimes and I love them. Once I was in a
old Victorian city, every building curved in different directions, there were
no straight lines not even the lampposts. When it would rain the people on the
street with masked faces would hide in air pockets or bins in the ground. An air
pocket consisted of a rip in the air that you could climb in, making you
invisible but still able to see the outside world and not be affected by it. I
for some reason climbed into a trash can in the floor…because that’s safe. Unfortunately
I wasn’t alone, and she wasn’t alive, never the less she detailed that the acid
rain would melt the skin from your body if you weren’t careful. That’s why
people would wear masks, long clocks and an umbrella at all times. She told me
about the ruler of the city who lived in the clock tower whose summit was in
the clouds. He was…hard to describe but I can only describe with a picture of a
character who reminds me of him.
Anyway I’ll stop and review what I said.
Is this creative? Well to an extent but I am held back by my understanding and
view of the world. It didn’t have to be a city, it didn’t have to be people but
people I have learned this throughout my life even my dreams contain elements
of the real world. Now If I was to give this first half of my story to a kid
and tell them to finish, more than likely they will have me in space and eating
prezels with an armadillo. Kids are far more creative than kids because they
haven’t learned about the world yet. A study was done by George Land in which
he he took 1,600 5-year-olds and tested their creativity using a test made by
NASA to test their engineers and scientists. He then re-tested the same
children at 10 years of age, and again at 15 years of age.
Test results
amongst 5 year olds: 98%
Test results amongst 10 year olds: 30%
Test results amongst 15 year olds: 12%
Same test given to 280,000 adults: 2%
This is a weird statistic that we actually grow
out of creativity because we have to conform to the rules of society.
“It’s been said that at the age
of 5, children ask 120 questions a day, at age 6 they ask only 60 questions a
day, and at the age of 40, adults ask 4 questions a day.”
I don’t even know if I ask 4
questions a day, but again this supports the theory of kids are more creative
because they don’t know any better. Isn’t that kindof awesome, that if I want
to be more creative I look on the web at cool images for hours trying to spark
inspiration. I got these links and facts from;
TBH I think she’s reading into it way to much and have devolved ways to increase creativity and what not, but I guess that’s her job.
I just watched an interesting video on youtube about creativity and how it kills us. Creativte people are more susceptible to suicide and mental problems later in life and she’s an author who talks about this and a new way on thinking about creativity. She talks about not being the vain of your existence by not giving yourself that vain. It’s a really good watch, inspirational and funny. Do please take the time to watch it.
I also watched a good link on introverts and extroverts. She mostly talks about the suppression of introverts in today's society but she goes on to say about how introverts are more creative because we need time to think, if you are extroverted you crave human interaction in a sense and need to be the source. This can lead to extroverts shadowing over introverts due to extroverts projecting their ideas and introverts being very reclusive with their ideas. This is a good lesson for the group project cause you should let everyone generate their ideas separately from the group to give them more freedom and creativity. I think no one person can be introverted or extroverted but live their life with a mixture of both but being predominant in one. Again its a good watch and I do recommend watching these links.
I think this leads me to the conclusion that growing up I use to have a lot more weird and creepy but awesome dreams because my knowledge of the world was little, I was also very introverted, pretty much just had my shadow to keep me company. I think I have less creativity now due to me getting older living with rules and developing my knowledge of the world and having to become more extroverted in university. That's not to say I have no creativity at all it has just decreased. This task has actually been a lot of fun, when I watched the links I was smiling and listening to the theories of theses woman and it's nice to hear this stuff in today's society rather than the rise in young pregnancies.
"Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it." Dee Hock
Am I ready for the games industry? To ask of us to get to a professional standard in 2 years is near impossible, you need to be industry standard for the 3rd year of this course to give yourself a good chance to land a job in the games industry. So hell naw I ain't ready, there is so much i want to learn and improve and I have such a short period of time to do it in. I want my last year on this course to be so awesome because I am going to push the box as far as I can with every project to make it fun for me. I am just afraid I wont be able to execute it to the standard I would want it at. So for this I need to practice, after all deadlines I will make myself just do 3D and 2D not because I want praise but so I am good enough to pull of my visions for next year.
I’ve been looking at companies recently and what
jobs are available out there. Right now all that’s going are lead positions nowhere
seems to want junior game artists. This is distressing cause I want to get into
the games industry and keep improving myself but it’s going to be hard if I
have to get a generic job and work on my portfolio in the evenings waiting for
a position to pop up. But there is hope, Canada
is losing it’s tax breaks and Britain
is gaining them. It’s only took I don’t know how long but its nice to be
recognised as a viable industry that does produce a lot of income. We have huge
titles being worked on in Britian at the moment like the new Lara Croft and the
new DMC. Two huge franchised being made by Crystal Dynamics and Ninja Theory.
I have knowing about Ninja theory for a while and they are pretty much my dream
company to work in. They do awesomely colourful and different games. I want to
be part of something that will be remembered not just a generic crap and I love
the genre and style Ninja Theory does. And just to fill in space I’m gonna add
in some awesome videos
Two games with completly different styles and it is something I want to do for next year. For the games industry you have to be flexible and so must show you can do high and low poly modelling but also different stylistic. we wont all be doing realistic games in the future.
Reading an article from gamasutra about the tax breaks provided some insight;
"A number of panelists speaking today voiced their concerns over the potential blocking of the tax relief plans by the European Commission in Brussels. A communication from the Commission earlier this month stated that not all games qualify as audiovisual or cultural works, and therefore should not receive state aid in Europe.In fact, the draft from the Commission went as far as to say that aid for games should be considered "on a case-by-case basis" -- compare this to aid for film, which is not subject to this rigmarole"
In some ways I can see what they mean but we accommodate many different gaming platforms in the UK games sector and would a games company that works for flash be more viable than a games company just starting their production of a 4 year PS3 title? If is hard to know but this would decrease the amount of jobs and cause more restrictions and even more clearances to go through. Not like we have enough as it is. It is unfair that we would be asked to do this and the film industry not, why are we always compared to the film industry when they should be compared to us? We out gross them bringing in more money every year even with the economical decline and closing of companies. Games are still mostly not seen as an art form yet the film industry is, do I even have to talk about Journey again? It just seems like they are very biased for the film industry which is older and hate the new young hip games industry."There were a number of resounding key points that were brought up time and time again throughout the day. The first, of course, was the tax breaks which are due to be put in place early next year."
At least there is good news that companies might start to expand and more jobs reach us before graduation next year. I hope Ninja theory take one people.....PLUEASE
""I am the dinosaur Nick is referring to," laughed David Braben. He admitted "Nick is right," given that digital video game sales are set to engulf boxed game sales over the coming years, but also made the point that sales of boxed games are still estimated to grow over the next years, and that completely ruling them out is not the right thing to do."
The digital market is expanding but I buy all my games on disc. I think they really need to think about the market, you have to facilitate more money into the right areas and target your audience. They could reduce the amount of money that goes into publishing discs but I think you'll find people get angry. Personally i like the disc format, i can look after it and play it anytime I want with no hassle, on the other hand digital stuff can always corrupt or be hacked. But I will just have to accept whatever I'm given
Just the random stuff I came up with for the group project, so moodboards, layout plans, idea generation, testing...etc. Guess putting it up here supports my contribution? and I'm bored of trying to draw tonight, don't you love it when I post 7 blogs in one day :D. I'm so productive.
Thought I'd post up some renders for the group project assets I did. I pretty much spent a whole day rendering out and positioning these so if you slag me I will kill you. I had to waste a whole day doing it and it wasn't fun, also I'm a guy who loves consistency although my images are all over the place and i did the textures sheets differently. But I did keep the same font, background and border...isn't that something? Ahh who am I kidding I can't redeem myself, I should shoot myself for being a hypocrite, goodbye cruel world. I think I have lost the plot a bit or it could be my personality. Either way it's like 4 in the morning and bed is beckoning...time for another blog, bo yeah :)
I've known about Journey for a while, I knew it had a beautiful art style, innovative game play, awesome soundtrack but this was like a year ago and I almost forgot about it. This is until it was brought back to my attention with its release, I got to play this game at Mr. Dempsey's house. I am now very jealous I don't own a PS3, I'm even considering taking a trip back to Ireland just to use my sisters PS3.
Journey could easily become one of my favourite games, I played just a little bit of gameplay but I was hooked. It is just stunning. I love Indie companies and I was saying today if I was a member who made this game I would stamp my forehead with "Life Completed". The games market has got me really interested and excited this last year and even writing this blog I am trembling with exuded passion. In the past I would rarely get so worked up about a game but Journey has got me thinking about it all day and it will continue to be in my mind.
The game consists of you playing as a nameless figure that walks the desert. You have three button controls, walk, sound, jump, really simplistic but so captivating. The soundtrack stops and starts in exactly the right areas, and it supports the settings perfectly. The environments are vast and have beautiful colours, Sam's Law is being ticked at every area I visited. It has beautiful compositions, I took notice that everywhere I looked was interesting and the camera would direct you to the most asethically pleasing angle almost. I dunno if that is just the way I play but the game is just beautiful and I can't really put in words how much I just want to steal an PS3 just to play this game. If you haven't heard of Journey go get a PS3 and play it. Experiencing it is far better than watching some twat on youtube talk and ruin the gameplay trying to be funny when he's just being a knobend.
Below are a couple of trailers but they don't do justice to how awesome this game actually is. Unfortunately the only downside of this game seems to be its length. You can complete it within 2 hours supposedly but when i get a hold of it I will explore everywhere and it will most likely take me 8+ hours and I will enjoy every moment. Savoring it until i cry tears of joy. I still don't think I have expressed my feelings toward this game effectively so talk to me in real life. I will natter on about this game I played for 20 minutes until your ears are bleeding from the thick Irish accent that will haunt your dreams.
End of small rant, maybe I'll do another one about the other games I am really excited about...who knows? Suffice to say my aim is to work for people who do things differently than the normal games company and it seems indie is the way to go. I will happily work the rest of my life on games like Journey getting paid minimum wage because I will enjoy every moment of it.
