Quick Post: Turntablism

As in a previous post i said that when i could i would get an actual turntable for scratching with. I did, just today. Bought some vinyls to scratch with from Goodwill for 99 cents a piece. And a Game Boy Color. One of the vinyls i bought was called Kismet, which is funny because our programming for UDK is called Kismet. It turns out that album is not only great for scratching but costs, new, on amazon around 45 dollars or something. I found this out right after putting little dots all over it in silver sharpie. Ill explain in a later post what thats about. Later, gotta work!

Various Art-makings(related and unrelated)

Related: Made a fountain and waterfall thing in Maya, imported into UDK and made a cool "flowing" water texture. Made a secondary stationary water texture and put it on a FluidSurfaceActor, and put it in the fountain, then made a particle system to show water hitting the surface of other water and splashing. Still needs work but oh well. Looking good so far. Here it is:

Unrelated(I guess): Had this idea for an icon for Firefox a while back that would look like the fox was the main character from one of my most favorite video games of all time, Okami, and suddenly last night(or rather earlier this morning) I found myself making it. It turned out pretty cool looking. Here it is:

For those who don't know the game, here is the box art and I highly suggest getting it, because it is amazing. On the PS2, not for the Wii, I've heard the Wii port had somewhat shoddy controls(which doesn't make any sense to me)

Been up all night, time for the labs.

Listening to: Sabaton-Metalizer
Watching: The Office, Psych
Playing: Rage, Disruptor

Second Tutorial: The Apple

Everyone has been doing this apple tutorial, so i decided to do it too. Its really cool how there are so many ways to blend colors together in photoshop. Here is what i came up with.

More Art Tutorials

Kenae's post on her blog really interested me, and its a surprisingly easy tutorial, and since I love the look of Da Vinci's old sketches and the illustrations in the Core Rule Books of Dungeons And Dragons 3.5 edition, I decided this would be a good thing to do. Here is what I came up with. I tried picking really intricate drawings that would look good in this style. Also, I found that you didn't have to make a path and then turn it into a selection, you could just select what you want and then copy into Photoshop. Here's my image:

These are the images I used to make it:

Digital Painting Tutorials

So our latest project in Game Design has been to find a few tutorials for Digital Painting in Photoshop and learn new techniques from them. A very cool project indeed, however since I have a pretty good grip on Photoshop, I couldn't find a large tutorial online, so instead I did a few smaller ones. Here they are:

http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_planet.html

I chose this one because our project in 3D is an asteroid-based Egyptian-esque society, and we will eventually need to make some sort of skybox for the level, and this could help a lot. It was a pretty easy tutorial, only took my 15 minutes, but I learned a good technique for easily creating good looking planets in Photoshop. Also, I didn't follow the tutorial exactly, the tutorial called for downloading a texture off the website to use as the planets surface, but I chose a similar texture that comes standard in Photoshop. It was easier that way, and it still looks good, plus I'm not using anyone elses intellectual property. When I do this for the final skybox in UDK, I will most likely paint my own texture. I also added a sun and star field, with a bit of lens flare.
Here's what I came up with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJs-Vlv4dw

 I chose this one because the eyes are the most important part of a character if you think about it, as a ton of emotion is portrayed through the eyes. I am also not very good at drawing eyes.... This tutorial maker is also amazing, as not only do you watch the whole video that shows you what brush strokes are being made when, but at the bottom they also tell you what specific tools and settings within those tools are being used. Constantly. Which is good, because if you see some other tutorials they just show you what they are painting and occasionally tell you a tool to use to get a certain effect.
Here is what I ended up with. I'm not as happy with how this one came out, but its a step in the right direction. It took me roughly 1 hour:

http://www.androidblues.com/cloudtut.html

This will definitely help me along in the way of Concept Art, having to paint clouds all the time and all. Very good tutorial, not as informative as the last one, but it was still pretty helpful, as ive never been able to paint clouds very well. Here is my attempt:

 So yeah...

A Brave New Art-Post: Some more of the Crazy, Wacky stuff I do at Ringling

So, besides falling epically ill, with some sort of flu or cold or whatever, and then beating it proficiently my last few weeks have created some cool little pieces of art/game design. We just finished our Modular Building project, which was the project where we as a class each build every piece that someone needs to build a building. I built this really cool stuff. Here's some process!

This is the start of my UVing, adding texture to 3D models, this is where I still have this really, really bad looking door in there. I modeled all of this in a few days, and the models are relatively simple but really cool looking, in my opinion.

This is my door, the bad one, brought into udk and lit with nightime lighting. Its UV's, and Diffuse Maps, Normal Maps, and Specular maps in place. Apparently we weren't allowed to use wood for our texture.... And this is a particularly disgusting texture(this of course speaking in hindsight, as I thought this was a totally awesome idea at the time)

This is my slightly modified textured models, and the door is in its place. Something seems out of place.... I wonder what it is? Maya however, makes the colors and textures look a little different when it doesn't fully render. In Unreal Development Kit my textures always look different. So lets see what this stuff will look like in UDK!

..... At this point(also after our in class crit) it became apparent to me that this door was just not working. To quote GLaDOS, "The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one." The door, the source of a lot of my problem and grief, has got to go.

Not only does its replacement look more like the rest of my building, but it just looks pretty good. All on its own. There are a few problems I still have to fix, but its coming along smoothly.

This is my latest version of my uv'd building. I built a small building in UDK with Midday lighting using my kit. Looks pretty good so far. Lots of problems still, need to fix a few UV's and how door pieces fit together etc...

 Some sketches for my Board Game Mod in Game Design 1. These are cards that the players will pick up. Just sketches for now...

These are all the "Playtesting Kit" cards we'll be using. I like them, the final ones will probably have the same layout, but not the look. So far, so good.

Playing: N/A
Listening: Sabaton - Metalizer, Wintersun - Wintersun

RAAAGGGGGEEEEE!!!! On more than one level.

Firstly, I Bought Rage! WOO! Good thing I have tons and tons of time to play it, what with Game Art and Design college taking up ABSOLUTELY NON OF MY TIME.... oh, wait....

Anyways, of the something like 2 hours I have played of it, I can say that its BEAUTIFUL. And I'm on the PS3 with it. It looks fantastic. I'm just gonna say that even though there is some pop in(textures sometimes take whole 5 seconds to load up) thats probably just from it being on the PS3 and not a PC. Also, I am really seeing the benefit of Megatextures(as id calls them) because the rocks and worlds look worn and weathered by the elements, there is nearly no I REPEAT NO duplication in textures because basically there is one HUGE texture covering an ENTIRE terrain element. This is really cool, albeit taxing on my PS3 hard drive(Sucker took up 8Gbs of my already precious hard drive space). Also, this is the first game on a console I have noticed where the saving saves basically the gamestate, not just from a checkpoint. Basically, EXACTLY where you were when you saved, THATS where you are when you come back. Awesome. Also, the death sequence is really REALLY cool. I can't seem to find a screenshot of it, but basically you use the control sticks to move a abstracted paddle across your heart to bring yourself back to life. Really, REALLY COOL! Also, the out-of-ammo backup hands(I call them the Fists of Rage!) are really fun. If you are feeling suicidal, you can just run up to an enemy and just punch the bejeezus out of them and watch the blood splatter on the screen. Nice!
There are some flaws. The world doesn't feel as open(I've only played 2 hours, hopefully it gets better) as I would have liked. It seems to be mostly set in one little canyon. Also, the first few missions are set in the same area, so you go back through the same places a lot. Also, the vehicles have a LOT of traction for being in a sandy environment. In Jak 3(something i can compare this game to a lot) you can swerve, skid, jump, and tumble all you want. In Rage, you can't really skid around a lot(there is also no sound effect for it) and sometimes at what seems the tiniest drop you get jet-propelled from your vehicle screaming as you get destroyed by the approaching earth. Another, very minor detail, you can't interact with much. I walked up to a soda machine and wanted to dispense soda into the tray below, and I couldn't. That was a sad day for all mankind...


Anyway, RAGE for a different reason is the following: If you don't already know(AKA started reading my blog late) my "One New Thing" thing is Turntablism. This is the scratching of records blah blah blah. And, yes, I have been working on this for what has apparently been 2 months. But, alas, I am not satisfied with the results I'm getting. Granted, I don't really have much time to turntable, but still i should be seeing more improvement in my opinion. The reason why I don't share any recordings of my work so far(because I really have been making them) is that honestly I am ashamed of them. They don't sound good. I play mostly guitar, some piano, some harmonica, and some drums somewhat well, and I can't seem to scratch records to save my own life. Why? I'll blame my equipment. The ION Discover DJ System:



I don't like doing this, blaming the equipment and not the user for ANYTHING computer related, but in this case I have to. This image, by the way, although not taken by me is exactly my setup. Anyways, the turntables don't really act like turntables and trust me I know turntables. I have one in my room in Texas that I have a decent collection of records for. It has a diamond stylus and a really spectacular speaker system. When you put your finger down on a record thats spinning, it slows down then stops, allowing you to, depending on the pressure, slow down the song then stop it. Not on this set. If you so much as bump this crazy contraption with your palm while adjusting the knobs(it happens A LOT) you STOP THE SONG. COMPLETELY. THIS RUINS ANY CUEING YOU HAD SET UP. YOUR SONGS ARE NOW OUT OF SYNC. COMPLETELY. Then, when I was reading up online about DJing tips, one tip is to run your finger around the bumpy sides of the turntable to slow down your song to create interesting effects, SOMETHING I CAN'T DO WHEN EVERY TIME I TOUCH THE TABLE IT BASICALLY PAUSES THE SONG. This also enters into the scratching thing, because now I have to deal with the start of my scratch starting from a complete stop instead of from a moving turntable. This is bad. Anyways, I WANTED to share my amazing music with the world on a soundcloud account I made, but since this one song is the ONLY thing I feel mildly comfortable enough sharing... here it is. I made the backing track in GarageBand and the scratched "record" is a Futurama quote. Excuse the repetition, I'm practicing....

Futurama Funk by tEh iNsiDiOUs 1

So, being the awesome person I am, I thought "I'm not just gonna quit and never try this again". Instead, I'm going to go down to goodwill today(since it is 3:15AM when I'm writing this) and look at their turntables and records and see if any of them will be good for me. If so, then hey howdy hey my project is back online. Huzzah!

The above song is where I am, this below is where I someday want to be:



Lofty goals, I know. Especially without a decent set of tables....

Listening to: Samurai Champloo soundtrack, Kill Bill Soundtrack
Playing: RAGE, Tekken 2