Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Projects update...

Finished the animation cycles for the critter; idles, attack, etc. Going to begin working on the first person and 3rd person animations shortly.

Finally decided on the formula for the Everafter prequel short as well as the characters, plots, and environments that will be used. Can't wait to get the models into production so I can bring them to life.

Friday, October 7, 2011

New Projects :)

So I joined an Indie team. We're working on a free roam, post apocalyptic FPS codenamed Blackout under the Divinity Studios, LLC name.

Using Unity 3D as our engine, we have a pretty diverse team of coders, artist, sound, design, and FX; which come to think of it is pretty large for an Indie team.

They have me working on enemy and environment animations. I've been working on skinning the first enemy model for the game. I'd post pictures but I'm not sure it's permitted on our private sites.

http://www.divinitystudio.com/

Check it out.

Monday, September 26, 2011

cameraOrbiter.js finished

Finished the final required piece for the cameraOrbiter script. I now have a mover and a camera movement tool for my games that is modular and easy to implement.

If I really want to, I can go back in and add some rotation limitations later. It'd be nice, but not required.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

charMover.js finished

Finished the charMover.js script. My issue in finishing this script was lacking a fresh set of eyes to spot my type ("stafe" is not the same thing as "strafe"). Just goes to show how much time can be spent trying to fix the simplest of things. I'd like to think if I had been working on this in a production environment, I could have asked one of my fellow coders to proof the brief script which would have allowed quicker turn around on this script.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Interesting Week

This last week has been quite interesting. I was told that I would be getting a raise starting on November 1st, and a significant one at that. I have also joined an Indie developer in creating a first person shooter, as well as getting told I could have a steady job doing FX in Unity for a mobile developer.

On top of all that, I also successfully finalized my company and studio's names and bought the related domain names (a .co and a .us). Once I create my web server I can finish the web design and begin working out the kinks in the routing and security that will be needed to allow access to the render farms.

I have almost completed the camera and keyboard scripts to allow the character movements I want. I still need to finalize the zoom functionality of the camera, and debug the strafe commands on the character movement scripts. Once that's done, I can move on to the artsy stuffs :)

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Moving Along...

Design Document for Isle of Trepidation is coming along at a steady pace. I need to flesh out some remaining game mechanics and I can move on to visual style guides and flow charts. I got a handle on all the feature creep I was afraid was going to run rampant in the original design. I've managed to scale back the scope to something manageable by myself or a small team.

The game controller in Unity is shaping up nicely as well. I'm hoping to use the same controls for both games. There's a bit more of a learning curve than I anticipated, but that isn't scaring me off the project. It's fun learning new things :)

I'm hoping to have some concept art of the island ready to go by the end of this weekend so I can start roughing it out in 3D and then transferring it into the Unity level.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Start your Engines

Works been hectic.. had to study and get Samsung certified on a 7200/7400 Samsung phone system.. but I passed that certification with flying colors (and it was fun to learn something new)

Now I'm splitting my attention between getting my RenderFarm commercialized, 2 Game Design documents (and all that entails: art, design, scripting, coding, animation, etc..). One of the projects ties into an animation project I'm working on in designing and studying proper ways to blend animation into seamless motion doing anything and everything a player can think of to do.

That segues nicely into this bit: learning a new game engine. I've taken up learning Unity3D, for ease of use and ease of access (free rocks). The engine is remarkably powerful considering the limitations I saw a mere 5 years ago. I'm learning it quickly and easily, and am looking forward to seeing my art assets come to life in the Engine.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Sickness Strikes - The plague...

Or at least it feels like the plague. Doc says strep throat and with the way I'm feeling, I concur (obviously not because of his credentials!)

Unfortunately I have been sick ever since I got my animation test from Avalanche Studios, which is putting me way behind where I wanted to be on these two animations. Time to dose up on Tylenol and hope it helps the antibiotics kick Streptococcus hiney.

Adieu

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Current Projects

Recently I have been working with a DJ at a local club to and create some new visuals to play throughout the night. I'm really excited about some of the effects we've come up with and about how I'm going to go about creating them.

I've also gotten back into the game design side of my love of animation. I've put together a concept that essentially is a giant character movement game that will demonstrate my ability to create and blend animations together to allow for believable (if not slightly stylized) character movement. Once I have the mechanics of the movements and moving through a level in place, I'll worry about throwing together a story and levels. At the moment, this motion project is simply named Free Reign.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Now that August has officially started, I've decided to put myself back out in the job market to find an industry job again. I am confident that with the knowledge and skills learned from AnimationMentor, I can secure a career I truly have a drive for in either the Movie or Game industries.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

AnimationMentor - Finish Line

So I finished AnimationMentor. Overall I had a blast. Most of the assignments were fun and challenging, and I learned a lot in the process.

Integrated some of my favorite pieces into the Demo reel and uploaded it. Time to start looking for reel work again :)

Thursday, May 5, 2011

So not sure where to start. I'm in my final class for AnimationMentor. The polishing is going well.

Started a job in the Telecom industry. It's... interesting. Learning new skill sets and getting better at customer interaction and support.. but I do miss doing animation and getting paid for it.

I've been working on designing a tattoo in 3D, but to render out in vector and to submit for 3D print. It's coming along nicely, and i make leaps and bounds in it's progress when I actually work on it; but those moments are far and few between.

I've been looking at some simple game designs, and have started hammering out some design documents for them.