Team Fortress character templates

Team Fortress characters

Here are my concepts for my character project. I chose the team fortress project which requires creating two characters of different age, ethnicity and body type.




They are pretty basic at the moment but I may add more details (weapons, accessories etc) depending on how much time I have later on.

Mechanical character with background

I never got round to making a background for this character last term but I really like him so I think he still deserves one.

Before




After



None of the background was actually drawn or painted; just a few shapes, gradients and filters. It's not something I wanted to spend a long time on and I think the simplicity of the background benefits the more detailed character. However I may come back to it again soon.

Environment project - photos

I chose the garden project.







It's not exactly a garden but there are some interesting textures going on here. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes me to model those wheelie bins seeing as it took me about 6 weeks to model one in the first year. Mind you that was the first 3D model I'd ever attempted.

Falling leaves A1 sheet project

During the first week of term we were asked to create something using just a sheet of A1 card, scissors and glue.



I was inspired by those flying paper people in Spirited Away. At first I was going to cut out a load of paper people, but I was convinced how good they would look, so I went for a more autumnal design.



There are 57 leaves. I could have squeezed a few more out of my A1 sheet but both my thumbs were extremely sore from all the scissoring. But I reckon the more suffering you endure for your art the better the final outcome will be. And the "Oooh I like your leaves!" I hear every time someone enters my room makes it all worthwhile.

Animal portraits

Some animal portraits I did over the summer






I do prefer drawing animals to humans I must say. I fact I think I prefer animals altogether to be honest.

Digital masterpiece

The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up

I had a quick browse of some classic masterpieces on the net and came across this one. I recognized this painting because it was on the wall in the dining room of my parents old house. Obviously I now know it was just a replica, and my parents one was a lot greener than this, I guess it had faded from the sun shining through the window onto it.




I have could potentially taken weeks trying to recreate this painting, so I decided to spend as little time as possible on it and ended up with something that looks a bit like a rubbish Van Gogh painting done in photoshop.



I'll have a go at improving it soon, perhaps add some more detail with a smaller brush.

Queens building project

To be honest this projects been a lot less stressful than I thought it would be, I was really dreading it as was everyone else I reckon. But I actually sort of enjoyed it and its definitely helped me learn a lot.

The quality of my models has increased hugely this term. When working in a team theres the pressure of trying to get assets finished quickly so as not to let the team down. When I work by myself I'm quite happy to go at my own pace which is usually pretty slow but the amount of models I made this term (somewhere between 15 and 20) demonstrates how quickly I'm actually capable of making them. In the first year it took me the best part of a term to make a terrace house, but now I think I could bang one out in a couple of days and it would probably look a million times better.

There was still a few more assets that I would have like to have got done but like some foliage and the display cabinet, but I've had to call it quits and go back to concentrating on my 2D work because I've been neglecting it for the last few months while we've been working on this project. I think we would have all liked some more time to work on this project but I think deadlines need to be fixed otherwise we could just carry on finding more assets to make and tweaking forever.

Before christmas I really felt like I was lagging behind everyone else in the class when it came to using max but my confidence has really grown now. So i'm really pleased we had the chance to do a group project like this because I've now got the hang of skills and techniques that I was really struggling with last term.

Mechanical and Organic characters

All done.. for now. I'd like to add backgrounds when i have the time but this'll have to do for now. The shadows probably need some work but this was my first attempt at them in photoshop.




I used an orange peel texture for my fruit creature which seems to have worked pretty well. The leaves didn't quite come out how i planned but overall i think it looks good considering i only spent an hour or so rendering it.




Again, i only spent a short amount of time colouring my mechanical character. I might have added more in the way of texture if i spent a bit longer on it, but the design and shape is pretty much spot on, just how i planned it.

Jumbo Jet

The air, land, sea task sort of ended up with me modeling a jumbo jet which wasn't very original but i'm pretty proud of it. This is definitely the biggest model i've ever made, i did start mapping it but it's going to be fairly hard finding reference for the texture page, i'm just going to leave that for now i think.

WiiKitty.com

Some highlights...







aww

Queens Building Assets

Just a few of my best assets so far. The metal shutters are probably my favourite, its a shame they're no longer needed though.








I recently added a lighting map on the texture page for the alarm speaker and it looks a million times better now. That's something I only recently learnt how to do thanks to kitto's helpful tutorial on our team blog.

Burnout Paradise

Yet another game thats pushing me closer to getting an XBox 360. Burnout is one of my favourite game series, and with the positive reviews this latest one is getting I will definitely need to own it. Unless a Wii version comes along I'm gonna have to get a 360. The amount of 360 games I want keeps growing and growing Bioshock, Halo 3, Orange Box, Mass Effect. Wii does have its perks though, I'm still persevering with Galaxy (only 13 stars to go) and I've got No More Heroes coming soon, and I'm a little curious about Zack and Wiki as well, worth a look I think.

Bioshock

Because of money issues I dont have an XBox 360 and I dont have a PS3, and nor do many other of my friends in Leicester. So when I go back to Guernsey in the holidays I do enjoy visiting my friend Craig who has been working full time since he left school and has a big flat near town with an HD TV, XBox 360, Wii, PS3 and a shit load of games. The highlight of my last trip was Bioshock. Craig had just bought Bioshock when I went to his flat so i watched him play through the first hour or so. It was pretty amazing to watch, probably one of the coolest openings to a game I've seen in a long time. The whole set up and scenario is just such a brilliantly original idea and so much more interesting than the average fps. I only played it for a short period of time and didn't progress that far into the game but that was enough to make me really want to buy an XBox. However, seeing as the last fps I'd been playing was Metroid Prime 3 on my Wii I did find using the 360 controller pretty awkward. I was wobbling about all over the place, controlling shooters with two analogue sticks is definitely not good.

Creativity - Super Mario Galaxy

How convenient that this game was released at a time when I'm supposed to be writing about creativity in video games. I cant think of a better example of creativity in a video game. The concept of the game allows for a huge amount of creativity compared to other games. There are at least 40 galaxies where your only mission is to get the star. The game designers were pretty much free to think of as many creative ways of collecting it as they could. Having the game set in space allows for a huge variety of different environments that wouldnt have been possible if it was set in the mushroom kingdom or in a Super Mario Sunshine style set up. There are hundreds of different planetoids varying from giant apples to floating pirate ships and even a giant wooden yoshi head covered in goombas. The music, the art direction and the gameplay are all highly creative, the main storyline is not so original but that is made up for by an unlockable storybook that tells the interesting and rather cute back story of Princess Rosalina and her traveling comet home thing. It really is an unbelievably creative and extremely fun game.