So as the end of the year approaches, I have come to the realization that, I'm about to lose access to a lot of my files. I'm talking files from up to 7 years ago, they're all going to disappear in a puff of smoke unless I transfer them. This is because I'm gonna be kicked out of schoology, my school google drive account, and possibly even my laptop because it is getting old and I'll probably get a new one before college. Soooo, this means it's time to transfer files, and part one of that is finding old work from schoology and putting it on my personal google drive or a flash drive, so I decided I'd share some of that work from my first Sci-Vis class with you here. That's really all I have to say about transferring files, here's some of my old work: I think it's pretty nice holding on to old artwork so that you can see how far you've improved. I won't save every single piece of art from schoology, but I'll save a few like these so that I can remember where I started, and how quickly I can grow when I set out to learn new skills. Hopefully I'll have enough storage for all of these files.
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This week was pretty relaxed, and only 4 days long as protests split the week in half. I worked on the GAD Showcase invitations, which I reworked to look a little less like a poster and more like an invite. Erin also suggested to me that since these invitations will be sent over email, I should make them animated invites, especially since all of her work for the class is animation. It took me a bit of time to figure out how I wanted to do this, but basically I am going to use each frame of the gif she sent me, import them onto the invite, and create new frames from that which will be turned into its own gif. It sounds like a long process, but it really isn't, in fact, I'm sure that they'll be ready by Tuesday. I also added a really basic 2-frame animation of the chicken to the invites that give me some serious Myst vibes, so I just hope some people show up to see our work (and I hope that our game works by then, it seems like Ryan has been making great progress on salvaging it from where it was the week before). Goals For This Week:
I simplified and textured these models that Julia created to go into the atrium. They're still about 4,000 polys each, which is NOT ideal but I do not feel like I am able to simplify them any further without seriously sacrificing the quality of the models, so I'm going to put them in the game as they are. I also finished some other simple models (just some display cases containing random objects to go in the atrium) which pretty much finishes my work for the year (once I import them of course). Once Julia gets done modeling the downstairs, I'll obviously have to help import and texture all of that as well, but we are really getting very close, which is good because we only have 35 days (including non school days) to get this project done. I hope we make it.
Mr. B also just told me that we need invitations for our showcase, so I'll likely be designing those since I don't have much else work that I can do. Goals for This Week:
This week was one that I thought would be pretty quick and easy, but of course, I was wrong. We only have a few more assets needed (maybe 6?) so I modeled and textured two of them very simply at the beginning of this week: the bookshelf and teacher desk. They're both low poly and I used a free to use texture that doesn't require attribution, so it was a very quick process. However, one of the other objects needed was a potted tree for the atrium. Julia modeled this and it looks fantastic! BUT it is 20,000 polys... so I'm back to simplifying, baby! I've been taken advantage of the feature that allows me to merge overlapping vertices. However, the trees still have quite a few polys, so I could see this taking me up to two weeks depending on how willing I am to sacrifice the quality of the tree. Once I get that done though, Julia should be done with the downstairs of the building and all of the 3D Modeling should be (for the most part) done. We're getting so close, and I'm really excited to have a finished game. I feel like we're going to succeed (don't worry I knocked on wood...), which is always a good feeling. Goals For Next Week:
If you look at my art page on instagram, it's clear that I go through periods of doing a lot of traditional art and then a lot of digital art, but they aren't really interspersed anymore. Lately I've been starting to more towards a lot more digital art for a couple of reasons.
This is sort of just a reflection on my recent art, and a throwback to an old blog post I made a while back, with a slight variance. This week has been extremely busy, mostly because of my involvement with theatre, so I only have a very small amount of time for art, which means I either have to make slow progress, or...
I can make fast art! This simply means focusing on hitting deadlines is a higher priority than quality (though, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to throw quality out of the window). Doing this wasn't actually planned on my part, instead, I had deadlines approach much faster than I had anticipated and was forced to work this way if I valued my sanity. However, this also meant that I have produced 6 gif animations and another digital art piece in the past 3 days or so, most of them being very busy days as well. Sure, they aren't perfect, but I hit the deadlines I needed to hit, and I actually learned a lot about how I work/ what I need to improve on. For instance, the unanimated piece of art showed me that I'm better at lineart than I thought, but also am still struggling with making distinct shading. The gifs proved to me that animation, while it can be a lengthy and arduous process, can happen even in short bursts of productivity, and thus, even if I don't have much time, having even a little time means that I can work towards larger artistic goals. For the rest of the school year, I want to try to do more fast art, this time with self-imposed deadlines in order to improve faster. As I talked about in the blog post linked above, I strongly believe that not being so meticulous and just getting in a ton of practice definitely helps me improve more quickly. Below are two of the gifs I made. There are lots of aspects of both that could be HUGELY improved, but they provided me practice in animation, and allowed me to see what I need to work on in the future. This week, I got the chairs simplified and textured, made some weird fish art, and then spent some time making textures for posters that would go around the school. I personally think that the chairs look pretty good, even if they aren't so real to life. I decided low poly count was more important than realism in this particular case, so that's what I did. I still need to send them over to Ryan via flash drive though, but since I'm writing this in class, I may still get that done today. The fish art is a model made to resemble an art project that is done at our school a lot. I also made these goofy posters to go around the school, with messages that fall under the category of "ominous positivity." I may remake the dog and chicken one, because both of those images do require attribution and it may be better to use images that do not. However, at the same time, this game is never leaving this room, so if they aren't attributed in a game that was made strictly for our own education, well, I don't think it's as unethical. I will definitely attribute them here though.
This week, I was sick, so I wasn't the most productive game designer this week. However, I did get a few things done! First, I got the stairs textured, so they can go into the game now. We were having a problem with getting assets to Ryan's computer (the computer our game is on) because for some reason, the computer no longer allows him to access google drive. Luckily, Mr. B fixed that pretty quickly by giving us a flash drive (thanks Mr. B :)). Finally, I was reminded that the chairs I made last year were very high poly and lagged out the game. I loaded up the file again, and it had Seven. Thousand. Polys. The unsimplified chicken had about half that many! So, I started simplifying away. I didn't quite get finished, but I'm sure I will be able to get it done by the beginning of this week. Most of the simplifying so far has just involved replacing spheres with cubes that are spherified and reducing the sides on cylinders. So far I've about halved the poly count, but I'm hoping to get it even smaller if these chairs are going to go in the game. Goals For This Week:
My UVW mapping skills have come in handy in texturing the stairs that Julia made!
That pretty much sums up my work this week, texturing stairs. I did also get the two items I made last week put into a unity package so that they can easily be added to the game, but that's a little less fun. This work week was a little shorter because of a guest speaker, and because I took some of the time to help Ryan with testing new player movement techniques so that we could find one that was less likely to make players sick than what we originally had. Overall, it felt like a pretty productive week though! This week was fun, I got to 3D model two inside jokes from our game design class! It was good practice with UVW unwrapping, and while I am still finishing the second one, it feels like this was one of the most productive weeks of the year just because of how much I got done. The first joke, I already made a post about because I started it last week, was Beats by Broke. It's a joke about the crappy headphones that Mr. B has to lend out to students who forget their own. The second is "why do we yellow banana?" a throwback to an exam question that made no sense to anyone. On a more relevant note, I also managed to model a simple bookshelf, so once I texture that, that can go in some of the classrooms (it has less polys than the banana, which is only about 150 polys, so it should be low lag). We also had some people from Microsoft along with a former NFL player come to visit on Friday to see what we were working on, and to talk to Mr. B about what the classes were like. Goals For Next Week:
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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