Merry November !

Merry November, everyone! It's the beginning of the Christmas season (as far as I'm concerned) and things have been unfolding already!

This week marked the beginning of the fourth round of RPP. It's strange to think about how quickly time has passed. There's just about a month left of my first semester here. Time really is flying. Though, all that means is that I'm wholeheartedly enjoying what I'm doing here. There's a few bumps along the way but it's definitely thrilling. 

This round of RPP is going by pretty smoothly. Our topic? MOBILE GAMES. Buuuut I'll make a detailed post about that later (and about the third round of RPP, since I neglected to do that sooner!).

I finally caught up with the 2D/3D class's homework assignments! Granted, I didn't do what they were supposed to and actually follow the concept art ... I figured there'd be plenty of opportunities for that once Capstone rolls around. 

The extremely long assignment with James the Warrior Fish has reached its end. The last step? Painting on textures, clearly! This step allowed me to get a little creative as a 3D artist since I spent some time hiding the UV errors that I didn't quite know how to fix, or had the time to troubleshoot.  For one reason or another, the UVS ended up a little wonky under the feet and at the corners of the armor. They're hardly noticeable now! For painting, I ended up giving Substance Painter a go after seeing how it worked for the people around me. I definitely prefer it to Mudbox. With everything you could do with the materials, the character definitely gets more dimension even if it's something as simple as making the metal glisten more. 

he's seen some shit.

As for animation ... I've still been working on that assignment that integrates idles, jumps, walks, and runs. Thus far, I definitely think I've been making progress. At the moment, there's just a bunch of nitpicking details left of the animation that I need to fix. I think I'm getting a much better grasp on movement, weight shifting, and what not to do when animating in Maya. I ended up making my life so much more difficult with the way I opted to translate my character ... I definitely should have utilized the World Control for the entire animation and make small edits to the feet along the way. It's a process trying to find what works the best for me buuuuut ... I think my animations are getting better with each iteration! 

Our current assignment in Common Core Art is to make dynamic materials in Unreal. I opted to feature James the Warrior Fish in this one too! After all this time that was spent on him, HE NEEDS THE LOVE.

For my dynamic material ... when you get into James' vicinity, he'll glow a random color. If you press "G", the color will change to something random. If you press "Space Bar", he'll stop glowing altogether. It came out pretty cool!

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On onward to some EXCITING NEWS.

Yesterday was last of the presentations for Capstone pitches. 25 proposals had to be wittled down to only 11 to be made into rapid prototypes for the last round of RPP. Roselyn's and my pitch - the Scales of Truth - was chosen to be one of them! What's even better news? Five out of the eleven pitches that made it through were by artists. I'm so proud and thrilled for my fellow artists right now. There's a big chance that at least one of our games will make it to become a full-fledged Capstone game.

I'm thrilled that we managed to make it this far, and we definitely plan to take this as far as we can possibly go. To make sure that The Scales of Truth makes it until the end, that just means that we'll have to work extra hard. I WILL NOT LET MY DREAMS BE DREAMS.

Here's a glimpse at some stuff that has been made for The Scales of Truth.

Anubis, our Protagonist!

Set, our Antagonist. 

And some fantastic storyboards of scenes from the beginning, climax, and end of our story - drawn by Chunzi. I'm always left in awe of anything she draws. 

November has just started, but it's already been very exciting! :3