My Minecraft avatar - The simple texture was created in Photoshop
Since I first fired up the Duke Nukem 3D level editor, I’ve had a hobbyist interest in level design for video games, this then spawned into character design and even making mods.
As the visuals and mechanics of these customisable games increases in size and complexity, the idea of creating your own assets becomes less appealing, suddenly I can’t afford to spend the time mastering how the scripting interface integrates with the 3D material editor.
Then Minecraft comes along and hits the reset button. A game which reintroduces the art of custom content creation to the masses. With its simple, cube-like characters and easily editable “skins”, Minecraft allows you to fashion your own pixelated character and easily upload your designs for all to see and share.
This has birthed a huge library of user created skins, ranging from comic book heroes to historical figure. Above you’ll see my avatar. I created the texture in Photoshop and exported as a PNG file, within seconds I was showing him to the world online. Good show Minecraft.
On the run up to Christmas, Call of Duty: Black Ops sales figures surpassed the $1 billion worldwide milestone. In short, the game is about as hot as molten lava. Hundreds of thousands of gamers are regularly online, fragging away to the latest offering of this successful franchise.
Upon opening my copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops, I was instantly met with disappointment. The instruction manual… it was HORRIBLE! I understand that the video game manual as an art form has crumbled over recent years, but still! I fondly remember such manuals as Metal Gear Solid, filled with wonderful illustrations and articles. Why is this though? Games have become so much more visual and intelligent, don’t they deserve some physical material?
Business cards are a tried and tested method of spreading your brand and leaving a lasting impression on a prospective client. Although this tutorial doesn’t delve into the arts of logo design or corporate identity I hope it provides some inspiration to new (and old) designers.
It’s been too long since I last let brush touch canvas (or in this case watercolour paper), so recently I purchased a small box of oil paints and attacked the rectangular white space. This was one of my first efforts, I wanted to restrain from using anything other than a reasonably thick brush. I wanted to get an almost expressionist look as I cared not for the realism but for the message I wanted to convey. I call it “A Sea of Suits”.
The test pieces in this video were printed in a contex 310 3d printer. Each model is just under an inch tall and comprised of at least 200 printed layers. The process involves printing a bonding solution onto a thin layer of powder about 0.09mm thick.
The test run turned out pretty great, Although these were scaled down to less that 20% of their intended modeled size to make printing quicker they still had lots of detail. The printer has a build plate just short of the size of an A4 sheet and can print models up to 11 inches tall, so you can imagine how big the models can be. I will grab some footage of it actually printing next week.
Due to holidays and such, the blog has been too quiet of recent so I thought I would share an illustration I completed this Sunday. The image depicts a mighty fist emerging from the downward spiral of a symbolic cityscape.
I deliberately made the cityscape very plain to strengthen that sense of emotionlessness. Cold cement blocks that stretch to the distant horizon.
The hand was drawn from a photograph I took of my own clentched fist. I took the photo into Illustrator and used the Pen Tool to create my vector art. The cityscape was made by extruding a matrix in Cinema 4D, I then used the Magnet Tool to pull the mesh downward from the centre, creating a very abstract shape.
I brought both elements into Photoshop and created a few gradient overlays to help merge the images. I didn’t want to overstyle the text, so I opted for a thick, dirty looking font which would hold its own over the difficult contast of the cityscape. The choice of font also echoes urban decay and rebellion.
I remember the weekend I purchased FPS Creator v1 very well. I spent many hours fiddling with the script system and trying to make a convincing urban setting. To me FPS Creator always felt very “open”, giving you the tools to experiment with your own logic scripts and behaviours.
People’s expectations were high, a steady flow of feature requests mounted as users wanted to act upon the inspiration they draw from modern releases.
Fast forward to the present and FPS Creator v1.17 is released. Don’t let the rather meagre version number fool you, this 70.6 MB update offers a huge list of updates. Bloom, particle decals and new “Dark AI” are but a few of the features that are now free to owners of FPS Creator.
FPS Creator 1.17 - Example of bloom and particle effects
Having made the jump to version 1.17 from a very old version, I think the difference is staggering. Of course it’s not just the new features and visuals that have benefited, the general stability and speed of the program seems to have been improved upon as well.
If you pushed FPS Creator aside due to previous frustrations, I urge you to reinstall, download the latest update and give it another whirl. I certainly believe you’ll be surprised at the new tricks this powerful games engine can produce, and who can argue at a £32.99 price tag ?
So I’ve recently purchased the upgrade edition of InDesign CS5. A feature I am definitely having fun with is the new Animation and Timing panels, finally it seems that Flash has fallen into the hands of the designer once more.
I loved Flash back in the days of ActionScript 2. Where button actions were simple to create and a slideshow could be generated with only a few trials and errors. When ActionScript 3 arrived I was blown away by how strict and formal the language had become, instead of writing a basic onClick() action I had to “register an event listener”. I’m not complaining though, Flash was making a natural progression to cater more for developers and those wishing to create more than a gimmicky slideshow.
Now it seems that Flash is forming a staple part of InDesign, the animation above was solely created in InDesign. Interactive elements are also easy to implement (e.g. click on the 8-bit Chris in the above animation). Many hard core InDesign fans have expressed a dislike for this move into interactive animation, InDesign has always been associated with design for print. Personally, I’m very excited at the prospect of creating an animated PDF magazine or being able to quickly produce a flashy banner advert. Cheers Adobe.
I recently purchased a rather nice macro lens from Graham for my Nikon D60, I’ve always wanted to take some extreme close ups and detailed shots of smaller objects. This lens certainly gave me the ability to fulfil my wish.
After attaching the lens I found myself looking at a blurry watch on the table, despite turning the lens clockwise and anticlockwise I couldn’t seem to get a focus. I took a step forward and suddenly… Woah! The watch was crystal clear and dominated the whole of my view finder. I realised the significance of distance between the camera and subject and how shallow the depth of field was through the view finder.
Through using a tripod and reducing the aperture size I was able to gain a more wide spread focus, I was soon getting to grips with it. Now I find myself looking around the house for anything to photograph.
Pocket watch
With the pocket watch photograph above, I was amazed at the contrast of focus which can be obtained over a few centimeters. This photograph is begging to have a column of text placed over the blurry right hand side.
More contrast in focus is seen in the below photograph, as modelled here by everyone’s favourite videogame hero, Duke Nukem.
Duke Nukem action figure
And lastly I want to demonstrate how even objects that share a relatively similar distance from the lens can also be pin pointed and brought into focus, leaving their neighbouring objects blurry:
A row of pencils
I love this lens, I find myself analysing the most mundane objects, wondering how I can bring them to life in a photograph! My next ambition is to photograph some insect life… Well, it doesn’t have to be alive does it? I wonder where I left that rolled up newspaper ?
Well it’s not exactly isometric, but close enough. I have been working on this illustration over the past few days now, I wanted to create a fictional city map depicting the locations of various important buildings.
Although the area in the final image covers only a few roads, I was still able to subdivide the map into various sections such as residential, commercial and industrial. My primary aim before selecting this perspective was to find the quickest method of creating and placing a series of prefabs, I also needed to recolour duplicate building to save time. Adopting a drawing style which relied on the Adobe Illustrator grid proved the best method.
Creating the map in 3D would have opened up many doors in terms of lightning, materials and atmosphere but I felt that they would distract away from the original concept of being a “plan” as opposed to a photographic piece. What would have been a real advantage with creating this piece in 3D would be ending up with a series of prefab buildings to use for various other projects, then again the time it would take to create these buildings in 3D would take considerably longer than their 2D, vector counterparts.
All what remains is to decorate the roads and streets with the finer details and smaller objects, then it will be onto the next project!
