DW4 - minichallenge 1 Day 3

Just a quick update tonight, did some tweaks on the sculpt I started yesterday. Tomorrow I think I'll try to figure out what to do with the gear in order to "War General" him up a bit.

G'nite

DW4 - minichallenge 1 Day 2

Fuck.. That pretty much sums up what just went through my mind. Turns out my concepts ended up veering to far from the original base mesh, so I had to scrap 1.5 hours of sculpting and start over fresh. That applied to both concepts, but after speaking to an old friend of mine, who it turns out is also doing DW4, I ended up doing as he did. After struggling to make concepts that would fit the provided form, he just said "fuck it" and started sculpting straight onto the base mesh, just watching things unfold as he went. So I did, and even though I wanted to keep away from the generic GoW alien everyone is doing, I ended up with a compromise. Who knows if this is where I'll end up though, but time is running and I cant keep on restarting forever.
Here are 2 images, one is of the original concept and the piece I scrapped. The other is what I managed to throw together in the past 25 mins. Work tomorrow, must sleep.

Peace

Mini-challenge sketches

I just did a couple of really rough concept sketches for the first of the preliminary mini-challenges, some 5 minute scribbles on top of the provided base mesh to try to find a concept that doesn't look like something straight outta Gears of War (which there are A LOT of already in the progress threads, you know who you are). The first one is a Russian general gone cyborg type character. The second one is in a more fantasy setting, a kind of humanoid frog character. Here I turned the army officer hat into a crown-like piece of gear instead, just sort of seemed to make more sense. Not quite sure yet which I'll end up going with, if you've got any suggestions, just leave them in the the comment section.
Remember, these are just rough, quick concepts, so no sending me emails going "omg lols ur drawn suxor". For one, I already know, second, I'd hate it for something to happen to you, if you hypothetically should end up tied to a chair in, say, my garage, getting both knees smashed in by a golf club. Hypothetically, of course.

Peace

Dominance War IV, bitches

OK, so today is the day when the preliminary mini-challenges in the Dominance Wars begins. Mini challenge #1 is a bust model, and the theme is "War General". We have been provided a choice between 3 different base meshes to use (in game type resolutions), and a texture resolution limit of 1024 x 1024 for each of the texture passes (normal map, specular map, diffuse map etc).
The time limit is 9 days, so I gots to get crackin' today already if I'm to finish on time. Just like the previous 3 DW's, you have to pick a forum to represent throughout all 3 challenges, and my choice fell on 3dtotal.com. I'm not much of a forum poster type, but when it comes down to it, 3dtotal is the one I've been at the most.

Check out the contest details at the 3dtotal forum thread and www.dominancewar.com, and wish me luck. I'm sure as hell going to need it.

Off to war, L.

Sketch of the day

Just figured I'd post today's quick sketch, this one took me about 30 minutes to sculpt and render out, then a few minutes for the photoshop composition. Base mesh was, as you can probably tell, a plane.

On another note, as I mentioned in the last post, I have decided to throw myself into the fray that is the Dominance War IV contest. The pre-contest mini-challenges starts now on the 20th of February, followed by the main event that starts in the middle of march sometime. Judging from what I've heard, it'll be pretty intense while its going on. But should you be awesomezorz enough to actually take home the first price, there will be plenty fame, money and blowjobs to go around. Even though, as all in this biz can attest to, the groupies you get in the game art community are usually not the ones you want to have waiting for you back stage. Its fascinating how someone can manage to get a size 50 ass into a size 2 Chun Lee Streetfighter costume. Some things you just cant un-see.
More updates on what I'll end up doing in DW as I figure it out.

For the time being, just throw Cypress Hills "Black Sunday" album in the CD player and wish you were still young and cool enough to have a 2.5 lbs blunt hanging out of the corner of your mouth. Ah, the memories..

Peace

Sketch of the day

So, this is just a small sketch I did today, probably a combined time of an hour or so of sculpting. As a part of my new and better life, so to speak, living by the aforementioned new years resolution. Which also entails me playing a lot more guitar these days as well, which is something I've wanted to up the ante on for years. The fact that I found out yesterday that there will be a 10 year reunion for my junior high graduation in the beginning of 2011 also kind of lit a fire under my ass. Since I left there as this scrawny, half-nerdy little dude (though, with the hottest chick in our class as my girlfriend for some reason. She probably doesn't have the best eye sight), I guess I have to consist of 250 lbs of muscle and disgusting success at the reunion. It sez so in the bible, dunnit?

There is a lot of work and art related stuff that I'll talk about in a later post, but its getting way too fucking late, and some of us have to go to work tomorrow. Make-a the world, spin-a around.
One thing I will mention though, is that I've decided to join this year's Dominance War Art Competition. The neck beard wearing artist types amongst you know what this competition is, for the rest I'll go into more detail in a future post.

Peace

Regularity ftw

Oh my freakin' god! 2 posts in 2 days?! Ok, so the story is that the missus needed the car today, so as a result of that I am stuck at work waiting for her to come back from her parents to pick me up. So hungry.. Well, at least these hours of hanging around at work after everyone else have gone home meant I got to do me some z-brushing. I am doing some deep sea rocks for a subsea environment right now (awesome, right? No?), which means I had to bring my beloved Intous 3 a5 wide tablet to work, since the stamp sized one provided by my employer is a complete and utter piece of crap. This one took me about 30 minutes, give or take. Basemesh was a sphere as usual.

Peace

Daily update, you say?

Ok, so that "a post a day" thing worked out just fuckin' awesome, didn't it? Wow, 3 months have gone by since my last entry. I guess time flyes when you're working your ass off without getting paid overtime. One of my new years resolutions is to cram in at least an hour each day to "hone my crafting skills", so to speak. Well, New Years Resolution, say hi to 90 hours overtime in 2 weeks. Hopefully, things are going to slow down a little now that the project from hell is delivered and done with, and I'll be able to get to some sculptin' again.
Just saying it gives me a strange sense of deja vu. Cant see why.

This past week, a quite lively discussion about overtime and the paying of such at my current gig, plus a bunch of awesome guys from 1Up.com being told to pack their shit and get out of their office as well (more on that coming further down this post), gave me a real wake up call. This industry is so fluxing and fleeting, and with an economy like we are blessed with these days, you cant afford to start slacking off, thinking that your job is always going to be there. One day you might be on top of the world, all is good and the biggest concern you'll have during your workday is what to choose from the vending machine or whether or not you should be allowed to watch porn at work as long as you're on break. Then, the next day, it turns out that the company's financial liquidity has gone to shit and that they won't be able to get the loans they need to keep the company going at its current rate. Then, all of the sudden, you're being escorted out of the office building with nothing but your dick in your hand (or hands as in my case).
You might get a severance, but if you cant get a new job quick enough, even that wont do you much good.
And that, I have come to understand, is why you must always, always, be on your A game. Resting on your laurels will not lead to anything other than some kid living in mom's basement getting the job you sorely need to pay your bills and feed your family/dogs/morbidly obese baby mama, just because you stopped working to improve yourself.


As far as the 1Up.com/EGM magazine story I mentioned, you can get the full story on most gaming forums. The lowdown is that 1Up.com and EGM magazine got sold by Ziff Davis to UGO over the cristmas break. In their initial press release, the helmeted-in-a-wheelchair-retarded CEO of UGO, a cesspool of shallow and uninspiring gaming journalism and whoring oneself out to the highest advertisement bidder, spoke at length about how they were so excited about this acquisition, and that they loved 1Up and knew that the site and the magazine, with its video shows and audio podcasts, were great simply because of its personalities. The next day, 75% of those "amazing personalities" were called in to a meeting room, where they were told to pack their shit and get the fuck out.
Luckily, because of the fans and supporters of their work and of themselves personally helping out and donating some of their hard-earned money, they all got their own projects up and running within the first week. Check them out and support their effort to keep providing us with great content and some of the most entertaining podcasts around, at eat-sleep-game.com, area5.tv and geekbox.net.

Now, to close out this way-too-long post, here is a quick 15min sculpt I did today, and a prime example of how fast your skills go down the fucking tube if you don't keep it up and keep practicing.

Peace and love and good happiness stuff to all.