Shapes and Lines

With turkey day just around the corner, November is almost in the bag, and a new year is rapidly approaching. Round and round we go.

On Saturday I bumped into the local group I used to run with, which brought back some memories and reminded me that this time last year I was gearing up for the Eugene Thanksgiving Day Turkey Stuffer 5k. What a difference a year makes.

I’m still running, but with a very different attitude and for completely different reasons. And I’ve never run better or with more satisfaction.

On a related note I strongly recommend reading “Born To Run” by Christopher McDougall, even for the non runners out there.

It’s a great book and a hell of a story that happens to be true. I read it earlier this year just as I was getting back on the trails following a nasty leg injury. That book caused me to completely reexamine everything about how I ran and why.

In other news, I may be holding an art show in December. I haven’t made committed to it yet but I’m getting a lot of push in that direction.

My apology to the friends out there that I’ve neglected to stay in touch with recently. I’ve had a pretty full plate these past few months, but you know the back story.  I am thankful for your friendship.

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I’ve been listening to Craig Ferguson’s “American On Purpose” on audio book, so if you want to hear this the way is sounds in my head, read the following with a thick Scottish accent.

Something like this  …A coople O week agoo Ah posted bark ‘at Madge Otter hud acquired th’ rights tae th’ Red Baron Gam IP, puttin’ it back in th’ hans ay some O th’ original creators efter mony years in th’ wild. …Get the idea?  Awe rite reid oan!

This week the crew over at Push Button Labs got their very capable hands on The Incredible Machine IP, which is fitting because Jeff Tunnell was the one of the original designers and producer on the game. PBL has released a bundled pack of the various incarnations of the game on GOG.com

Here is another quick sketch in the same style as some of my recent color concepts. This one was about two hours, but I spent way too much of that screwing around with the ground around the base of the rock.

Autumn has arrived in Eugene and the trees are beginning to drop their leaves. Time sure does slip by fast when you’re having fun.  I’m gonna a have to switch to more appropriate subject matter or at least a Fall color palette, as the season is beginning to grow on me.

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…or don’t, if you prefer S.N.A.F.U.

The recent release of my Enchanted Forest Environment Pack was well received and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback on it so far. Granted it’s only been live for two and a half days, so I may be celebrating a little prematurely.

It’s been a very busy month for me and looks to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

I put in a very long four weeks on a seriously kick @$$ project for Bad Habit Software, game environment, avatars, load screens, GUI’s, and particles effects. That’s wrapping up and now I find myself immersed in two new environments development projects. But it’s too soon to show them off, so I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Obligatory post image: this is a screen cap of a MudBox sculpt I  started on last night.  One of about a dozen I’ve done this week. Still a long way to go on this one.

The reality of most game development is that high-end asset generation (normal maps, specular, ambient occlusion, etc) via Sub-D modeling or high poly sculpts, often simply isn’t justified by the time involved.

Unless you are talking about character generation and a few other exceptions, the bulk of content is best (bang for your buck) created via tools like Crazy Bump, or Shader Map Pro.

However, knowing when to make that call requires you to know the in’s and out’s of both. It takes a master to make a complicated task seem simple. And there are no short cuts getting there.

But there are principles and practices that will help you along the way. Sort of like “Don’t take candy from strangers …unless they’re distracted”, and  “Never pee uphill”, or that there is no right answer to “do these pants make me look fat”, which inevitably leads to your evening being F.U.B.A.R’d.

Einstein’s said “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. Or as Da Vinci  put it “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

At the end of the day, time really is money. The sooner a developer learns to reconcile that with the passion for their craft as an artist, coder, or otherwise, the happier and more effective they will be. That’s no easy juggleing act.

I was going to write more about this from a project planning perspective, but the sun is shining, so I’m going for a run.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

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It took way longer than it should have…

…but the universe has a way of tossing curve balls at you when you least expect it. …and usually in threes.

The Enchanted Forest Environment Pack is live and available on the Garage Games site.

You can read my post about it and comment Here, or check it out on the product page and pick it up Here.

It’s long time in coming, but my latest content pack has finally been sent off to the publisher (Garage Games) for release.

I didn’t end up where I was headed when I started on this content pack, but I arrived more or less where I needed to be.

In fact, I didn’t even start this as a content pack. The Enchanted Forest began as a contract gig to design and create an environment for an online MMO being developed on the Torque Game Engine.  I retained the rights to the art in return for a reduced hourly rate on the contract.  A good deal for all concerned.

After the contract was wrapped up, the pixels and polys collected virtual dust while I moved on to other things.  But eventually I came back around to it and started updating the art with normal maps and reworking a good portion of the content with the intention of releasing it for the Unity Engine and Torque game Engine Advanced.

By the time it began to resemble current gen art content, Garage Games had their shiny new Torque3D engine going strong.  Derek Bronson and Brett Seyler of GG eventually persuaded me to steer development toward Torque 3D, which would also give me an opportunity to learn the in’s and out’s of the next generation of torque tech.  And I have to admit Torque 3D is pretty damn cool and come along ways since I first started using the Torque engine back around TGE version 1.2 or something like that.

Hopefully the community will enjoy the pack and put it to good use.  There’s a dark side to the Enchanted Forest waiting to be packed up and ship along side it, but life is keeping me pretty busy right now, so that will have to wait a while.

It should launch any day now and I will post a link as soon as one is available.

-Todd

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This is a design for a product logo I’m wrapping up. I’m not one hundred percent sure of the current color scheme for the font, but it’s pretty close. It’s fun subject matter and it would be easy to get carried away with, but as they say, “time is money”.

Special thanks to my friend Ori who gave me the push necessary to rework this into a full color illustration when I was happy enough with my original black and white graphic version.

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…Where’s the Corona

Following up my recent post of the Enchanted Forest demo, here’s a promotional video I just recorded that shows off the finished environment running in the Torque 3D game engine. The previous video was recorded in TGEA (Torque Game Engine Advanced), which is the last generation of Torque tech.

The most obvious differences in the video are the changes to lighting and minor global tweaks to the color palette for the environment. And the bitchin’ funky background track I added.

The end of July has rolled around and brought some crazy heat to Eugene.

How hot is it? …it’s so hot, hot water’s coming out of both taps. It’s Africa hot! …”It’s so hot…. Milk was a bad choice.”

..and here’s a little sketch for some props I’m working on.

-Todd

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Some of my content pack work was recently used in the newly released game “TRINE” by developer Frozenbyte.

TRINE is a classic 2D platformer set in a beautiful 3D environment that GameSpot selected for their E3 Editors choice award, and described as ” ..the kind of world we imagined when we read storybooks and dreamed of far-off kingdoms..”.

TRINE’s a great little game with solid play mechanics and beautiful visuals. If you like playformers, I strongly recommend checking it out.

The crew over at PushButton Labs posted a video showing off some new features in GRUNTS Skirmish, and a little of the art I contributed to the project. Read more about the game Here.

Watching the video brings back memories of building forts as a kid and waging dirt clod wars. ..Derek, sorry for hiding rocks inside the dirt clods. Ok not really, those things were like depleted uranium rounds. Best dirt clod wars weapon EVER!