notes from underground

This is a test of whether I’ve got Lightbox 2 set up correctly, not a great example of image quality… these are all from my little moleskine sketchbook, but I took them with a handheld camera and spent an absolute minimum of time preparing the images, so enjoy the nice interface and check back again once I own a working scanner.

suspense!!!

OK, so I have a well-documented love-hate relationship with the folks over in the Modern Culture and Media department. I want to hate them, but deep down, within the icy, granite bowels of their darkest, most deliberately obfuscated souls, they have some good ideas. Case in point: this paper, on Shadow of the Colossus, immediately irritates me by first off requiring a citation for the statement that game designers are artists, as if we need their permission, their endorsement, to be so! Add to that the simple fact that they’ve taken one of the most beautiful games I’ve played and broken it down into theoretical tripe, and you have a recipe for aggravation. That said, there is a quote in the article that I somewhat appreciate:

Scott Miller, […] co-creator of Max Payne, writes, ‘It’s time game designers grasp the power of creating games with emotional depth, […] and really – I mean REALLY – make them care about their game’s story’

Last night I played through part of Rainbow Six: Vegas II. In one level, your team fails to prevent hundreds of innocent hostages from being slaughtered by a chemical weapon. Here’s an instance where Miller’s point could have been taken more to heart. The fact that such a scene even exists in Vegas 2 puts the game a huge step above its much more traditional, linear and uncomplicated predecessor, but at no point in that level is they player made to feel that there is any hope of saving the poor souls inside.

Now, I don’t want to start an argument about the riskiness of creating psychologically traumatic situations in videogames. All I am saying is that for any game to make an impact on the art form (particularly a game in as formulaic a pantheon as Tom Clancy’s) beyond implementing more clever mechanics and better level design, we need to take more chances. Take risks with your players’ emotions. Taunt them with cake or something. The first time you take the cake away, they may cry. They may even slip up in their grief and get incinerated in a fire pit. But it’s a game. They’ll try again, and the second time, they will have learned something.

The folks I’ve met who have participated in Teach for America emphasized one thing about their experiences above all others: if you trust somebody to rise to a challenge—a kid, a gamer, whoever—they usually will. Even if the outcome of the story is predetermined, allow the player to think, just for a moment, that they have a chance to save those men and women. Let them sweat a bit.

Just a thought.

Here’s the link to my final project on YouTube, and here’s an embedded version:

Enjoy!

The first final renders from my animation final project are in! After a surprising turn of events last night, this project has gone from being my second-to-last project to being my final undergraduate project ever. Fairly momentous, though also somewhat daunting… all the more so because the deadline I am racing to meet is in a meager four hours, and I’m only done rendering one shot! You’d think I’d have more to show, I started weeks ago and in this final run-up to the deadline I’ve been awake and working on this for roughly 40 hours. At least the other (cooler) shots should be done in good time to present them at the screening and wrap party on Thursday.

Anyway, here’s the image:

Image links to a higher-res version… it’s a pity the depth map shadows are such low quality, but any higher and it would have been going significantly slower.

I’m getting pretty close on my final project. Here’s a preview of what is to come!

Semblare has been on my back for months, constantly asking me “where’s your comic.” Well, the last month of your college career is really not the best time to take on MORE projects, but here’s a quick teaser of a project I started recently:

I honestly can’t yet say when this project will really get to see the light of day, but I’ve wanted to do some kind of comic for so long that there’s really no reason to put it off any longer. See? Something good CAN come out of being laid up with a stomach bug: tons of time to draw! **grimace**

Also, this is probably a good time to issue a formal plug for Semblare’s comic Fortune Memories. Lyn’s doing a tremendous job so far, she’s incredibly dedicated to her work and it shows. The recent strips are beautiful, and I’m really looking forward to the rest of the story. Be forewarned: as she intends this to be a book eventually, some strips feel a little exposition-heavy for a webcomic. I recommend Whimsical for your one-off humor needs.

It’s about time I put something resembling an animation reel up here, so here’s a short reel I’ve cut together:

Animation Reel, Fall 2007

This has no sound, but since I originally updated it I have replaced the out-dated source footage for the knight segments with final renders, cleaned up timing, added captions and put it on youtube!

I’d rather have done a better job, but something’s better than nothing, in this case! Character segments modeled and rendered in Autodesk Maya (Alias, back then), all else done in Maxon’s Cinema 4D. I love Maya’s character tools, and want to learn to leverage that program’s scripting and particle capabilities, but Cinema is so much easier to model in! Hehe. Total personal bias, I also like the flexibility of their NPR Renderer.

So I’ve done a few more paintings, including some I’m reasonably satisfied with. Success! A major plus was switching to working primarily with a painting knife for doing anything more complicated than washes, I feel like I’ve got a lot more control than with a brush, especially with lines.

First off, here’s my “studio”, or “cubicle” on a bad day:

Here’s the painting I did in response to the prompt “Patriotism” (I’ll go through my thought process on this one in another post, it’s the first painting I really planned so far this term):

Then one done in response to “Camouflage” (Don’t you love these vague assignments?)… How many faces can you find?

Then, finally, some plein-air studies we did down by the river. I think I like these even more than the camouflage one, they were a lot of fun to paint.

Those last two will be some of the building-blocks for a later project, I’ll rant about that soon too. For now, goodnight!

So I just got back from Connecticon, and it was AWESOME. Met a ton of really cool people, saw some incredible art, and generally had a blast for the three days I was there. I’ll find somewhere to upload the photos a bit later… I got to meet a bunch of amazing artists and have the snapshots to prove it, not to mention the fantastic cosplay I saw!

A few of the people I met really impressed me, both by being really open and friendly about their work, and also by being fantastically talented and skilled. I have a helluvalot of business cards from different artists, comics and companies, it’ll take a while to visit all the links and remember who they all are, but these were the webcomics and artists that I liked talking to the most:

• Shelli Paroline was an artist I met in the Artist’s Colony who flagged me down when she saw that my badge said I was from Providence. I’d passed her table a few times but she’d never been there, there was a really interesting poster right at the front of her table that I really liked but I didn’t get a chance to actually meet the artist herself until Sunday. In addition to doing some great fanart for shows like One Piece, she is working on a comic (or several, from the looks of her website) called The Trouble Is that features some truly spectacular characters and artwork. I ended up picking up two prints, and she gave me the teaser booklet for The Trouble Is. It’s kind of sad at the beginning, but I’m very interested in finding more of her stuff, it looks like a really cool world she’s creating! (Plus it can’t hurt that she’s from the Boston/RI circuit, so comparatively local… we joked about restaurants on Thayer, among other things!)
• Stan from Wasteland (Parasomniac.com) is the other kickass person I met at Artist’s Colony. Again, didn’t meet the artist until after I’d seen her work, but it looked so cool and graphic that I spent a long time talking to her friends and flipping through the work she had on display anyway. Met Stan herself a bit later… her art has major FLCL style influences, both anime and manga, but given that I love FLCL this is entirely a good thing, and she’s done really interesting work with it. I wish I could draw like she can! Of all the doodles I got from artists at the Con, INCLUDING people like Hawk and Ananth, I think hers was my favorite. So cute! May try to post a picture later, have no scanner at the moment.
• Scott Wegener absolutely deserves a mention. He was sharing Brian Clevinger’s table in the Dealer’s Room, and if I recall correctly he said his book ought to be available on the nuklearpower website later this year. Amazing comic art, check out this badass-ery, and a nice guy on top of that! He showed me some of his work from his project Killer of Demons, a cool project with an interesting premise.
• Last but Not Least, a HUGE amount of love to spread for CHUGWORTH ACADEMY! I’d never really read their comic online before, although I’d definately noticed Dave Cheung’s art… I started talking Dave and his writer Jamal in the dealer’s room, and before I’d left I’d talked myself into buying their book, essentially sight unseen. Oh man, was it funny! Not for the young or faint of morals, it’s a bit risqué at times, but… soooo funny! At the Iron Webcomic event (which I shall rant about AFTER painting tonight) I started reading it while drawings were being judged, and couldn’t stop laughing. The art’s good, the characters are absolutely nuts, and the writing is really random and entertaining. I have no idea why I didn’t read it sooner!

I have a ton more cards to go through, and a ton of fun panels and events to describe, but for now I need to sprint to the art building… I’m on the verge of falling asleep here, if I don’t get to work soon I’ll have shot my night of work all to hell. Not ideal. G’night for now, more to follow later!