The Impending New Year Fills You With DETERMINATION

Winter break has been going on for a little over two weeks now. It's been insanely relaxing to finally be able to wind down and not concentrate on the constant streams of work. What I've been doing for these two weeks has been mostly drawing + digitally coloring, though I intend to start back up on some animation work and fix my reel before the Spring term gets here.

Last week, I finally got the game Undertale after all of the buzz surrounding it (from both the interwebs and friends, teehee). Sooo, about 50% of my drawings right now are inspired by it in some way. The other 50% were a part of my gift to my shitposting partner in crime. All she really requested is that I draw some of our many characters. AUs were involved. Because we're lame and I really need to practice on character sheets.

From left to right: Nekane, Mateo, Antonio, Poiyaunpe, and Alex. Dat sausage fest. You can tell what series' they're somewhat based on, CAN'T YOU? Since this is just a  first-pass, I'll eventually go back and redraw these to make adequate character sheets.

Drawing  children is fun.

They're the bitty forms of Antonio and Mateo.

Designs for another character, Bachué, both older  & younger (I wasn't successful in trying a new digital painting method, oops), and a chibi Antonio.

This is an in-progress human design for Alphys from Undertale. I just wanna pinch her cheeks. Meeeep!

 

I worked on these very recently! 

There was a need to draw a Mettaton vs Frisk pose-off, and I just absolutely fell in love with Muffet's design. Gothic lolita has always been one of my favorite fashion trends and it got even better once you mixed that in with a sassy, money-grubbing spider.

On to a more productive front? I did some random sketches for Leylines. It's mostly just character sketches, at the moment, but I'm feeling inspired to give some environments & potential scenes a try too during this break. Thus far, a lot of my inspiration has been taken from Native Americans, Sami people, Mongolians, and the Ainu people. There's going to be a lot more to come of this as the days go by!

 

May the impending new year bring good fortune and happy times for every member in my Cohort. ♥ The next year is definitely going to be challenging for us, but we'll definitely be able to make it through and create spectacular things. ♥

FREEDOOOOM

The last rounds of Rapid Prototype Production and Capstone Pitches is finally over. There's a gigantic sweeping wave of relief that's washed over me now that things can finally calm down for the next month.

So, how did RPP#5 go? Clearly, there were some ups and downs during the project that mainly resulted from me not planning as ahead as I could have. I was definitely more preoccupied with visuals and a finished demo rather than, y'know, the main mechanic. The most important part. Orz. The main motivation I had for pushing this game forward was mostly for the learning experience behind it. I was able to be a lot more hands on than I was with other projects. In about three weeks, I got some experience with how to even go about using Unity's interface, lighting, audio recording, and Level Kits. WOO. Also event planning. I definitely can use some more work on that. 

 Despite that, I think our end-product turned out pretty well! I was amazed with the work our programmers - Jared and Chuck - did on this project. They managed to tackle integrating animations, clues, triggers, particle effects, combats, health, cutscenes, and platforming in such a tremendously short amount of time. Yowza. I'm tremendously thankful for all they've done on The Scales of Truth while judging other projects for class. :3 

Like I mentioned before, Roselyn and I got some practice in building a pretty decent Level Kit - which is likely going to be a thing in the Capstone process - so that gave a lot more autonomy to our Level Designer, Keiran, who crafted a pretty great level! :D We managed to accomplish a lot in two and a half weeks but I'm more amazed that we managed to keep a team harmony that was still pretty chill by the end. I'd be happy to work with any of these people again. :3 

check out our demo! :3 

The Scales of Truth didn't make it through to become a Capstone game! It's actually pretty relieving not to have that stress waiting for me in the next semester. It feels like I can finally breeeeathe and concentrate more heavily on animation. Five other games managed to make it through though and each show a lot of promise. The Channeler, Child No More, Leylines of Legends, Photography Guru, and Sketch Artist are all going to be made into full-fledged games!  Three of these games had an Artist pitching or co-pitching and I'm so proud of that. Congratulations for them! ♥ Never be afraid to give things a shot because you won't know what happens unless you do. :3

During our last RPP class, awards for the various games were handed out. Clownin' Around, Kidferatu and the Spoopy House, and King Grumps versus the Kolorful Kandy Kingdom were all nominated for "Best in Show" with King Grumps taking the victory! Hot damn, am I proud of every team I have worked on. :D

Today, we got our Spring semester schedules & our Capstone teams. I'll be working as the Animator for Leylines of Legends. I'M PUMPED. RWAR. I'll be getting to do some human and creature animations, so I'm definitely looking forward to explore that and finagling more with Motion Capture.

As for other things? On Monday, the Artist have their "final" where we show off the things we've been working on lately. Animators can show off one (or all) of their animations, Tech Artists are showing off their final projects, and 2D/3D artists are showing off the environment they made jointly together. Here's the reel that I lazily slapped together (and might shorten during the weekend).

Over Winter Break, I'm definitely going to be fixing up these animations so they could be reel-worthy! I'm already starting to get antsy from having little schoolwork to do. orz. So when that inevitable itch comes to work on more animations, I'll probably be working on fighting or dancing animations. ♥♥ It's going to be a lot of fun to just focus on that for a while.

Oh. And the second trailer for The Darkside of Dimensions also came out today. That makes for a triplely-awesome near-kickoff to the Winter Break.

Playing With the Big Boys Now

Time is really flying by. This three weeks have came and gone by in an instant! The last round of RPP is coming up on its last legs and final Capstone pitch presentations are soon to be underway. It's relieving to know that Friday will mark the day when things finally start to wind down as we prepare to enter the winter holidays.

What I enjoy most about this RPP is not that its The Scales of Truth that I'm working on, it's that I have more of an opportunity to learn this time around. I got to finagle much more with the Unity engine and mess with materials, lighting, colliders, particles, and workflow. There were a lot of silly mistakes made on my part, though, on the path to learn more about these things. Things weren't exactly perfect, but I definitely feel like I can be more of a help on future Unity projects. My group-mates definitely won't be getting harassed by me for small things like lighting. Orz.

This weekend, I worked on decorating and lighting dungeon. That just meant replacing the proxy walls, shoving in some materials, and decorating everything without interfering with the level design. It was pretty fun! ♥ I wish that we had a few more days so I could make this much more visually appealing, though. It's fantastic so far given that this was all done in three weeks! I'm really thankful for my team for this one. 

Here's some progress shots of the level so far.

  

The lighting might be edited a little more to brighten things up for the player. Other than that: things are looking great! Now it's time for some fine-tuning.