Lighting Designer

That's my new title for 413, yup. We made our official presentation to ACBU council last week, and they loved it.

The logo at the beginning was something that I designed. I'm really excite for this.

Oh hey, a blog.

Well, lookie here. I had almost given up on trying to regularly update this but with a conversation that we had last week in my IM 413 class I've changed my mind. We talked for a short amount of time about keeping progress blogs/artist blogs that talk a bit about whatever big task or project we're working on at the moment. I won't go into details at the moment (I spent half of last week in and out of the ER) about our big epic project of the semester, but I figured I'd try to touch on as much of what's going on right now.

So Senior year got here REALLY freaking fast. There are two big project-oriented classes this semester, and a third one that, while it's huge, isn't going to kill me as much as the other two are (it's working with sound, something I enjoy immensely). Projects include working with FMod in 3D soundscapes, designing a game for multiple touchscreen platforms, and a big fucking epic project that will probably end up with me in the ER a hell of a lot more this semester. I'm a little worried and excited at the same time; we're working on a touchscreen interface that will allow the user to experience a completely new way of enjoying music and dancing than usually done. And to trim that last statement down to the motto that Jim had at the beginning of our class: "IM 413: We do cool shit!" I'm hoping that in both of the group project-heavy courses I can work more and improve my niche as a designer/artist type. I would (ideally) like to work coding and other aspects into the mess, but considering that I'm taking a lot of what most students consider "heavy" courses all at once, I would be more than overjoyed if I got told to sit in a corner and draw X all day for the rest of the semester.


Speaking of drawing, I do have a tumblr blog that I have (grandoise) plans for. It is going to be (hopefully) used as a sister blog to this one. Where this one will go into the nitty-gritty of the processes that we're working on, the other one will be image-based at most. I've found that my ability to draw bodies in poses has slacked off immensely in the last year or so. In an attempt to improve myself (and to on those super typing/etc days that I just need time to draw) work on artwork in short bursts so that I'm continually keeping up my digital tablet proficiency as well as improving on my own artwork. Thanks to the BF buying me TF2 for my birthday this year, as well as the Polypack contest, I've done a ton of research into the ways that VALVe has gone about designing their game series, especially how each TF2 character has its own distinct personality and outline. My current sketches are based around an online forum that uses TF2 classes kinda like D&D. I know, uber geeky, but I'm also working on my writing abilities in the forum and some of the stories I've collaborated on just beg to be drawn out. I've started out doing face/body shots of some of the characters as a test. If it helps me improve, fuck, I'm all for it. I will link to it when I'm awake a little more, but for the moment, just take my word that it's there. (It's empty anyway....)

I lost track of the train of thought that was occupying this post, so it's probably best for me to call it a night. Just plan on hearing more from me soon. OH YEAH. I also finally got a Droid2. Officially completely hopeless and wired.

Apologies once again.

I've once again been super busy. Moved into the new place and I've been keeping myself occupied with several things.

Organizing! Holy crap!

So I decided (with some encouragement from outside forces) that I'd be attempting to condense my multitudes of emails and other general claptrap in a way that can keep my shit organized without a half hour worth of just checking separate accounts. Apparently Yahoo won't let you load/forward your mail to other accounts unless you pay $20 for it (sonofabitch) And other crap. Debating on killing off both my yahoo accounts (the one I use for personal crap, and the one I use for band/radio show stuff) and just keeping the new network of gmail accounts that I made for the art portfolio and personal mail (both of them sync with one another) since I can work with them and my school email for the remainder of the time I have that thing.

Two more weeks before classes get out for the semester. Goodbye sleep, it's been nice knowing you. If I get my shit together I'll post some of that stuff up on dA or here...or fix my portfolio website so that it doesn't suck so badly. Need to start working with droopal again.


Anyway, yes. New stuff. A group of Bradley University IM students/graduates are getting together over the summer to start work on a game design company. If we can get it off the ground before half of us graduate, I'd be very happy. We've got a few ideas for names of the company, but the one I like the best so far is named after the level that's always used by programmers to fix bugs before the public part of game testing is involved. If I don't pass out before moving out next weekend, finishing as much of these games as I can, and getting everything else in line, I'll be happy.

That's all for now, I guess. I can't formulate much more than that in my head.

Holy Crap. What a Day.

So, I wake up this morning and get told my one class is not going to be held for the second time this week. I am rather happy about it, but a little nervous because I have a project due monday in that class and I have no idea what I'm doing (primarily because I've been working on other stuff this week...). So I take my time getting up and working on some artwork today.  Around 4pm, a light goes off above my head before it bursts into full blown sirens. There's a fire alarm in my apartment, so I dive out to the street with my shoes, my wallet, my keys and my phone. It takes a few minutes, but one of the guys living on the thirdfloor peeks his head out of his window, the window billowing smoke, and he yells, "Sorry guys!"

"What the hell did you burn?" I shouted back.


"Easy Mac!"


........while I stood and tried to ponder the complexities of how the fuck someone could burn easymac, three firetrucks showed up, checked out the upstairs apartment, and left. I file it under the same category as the phonecall I got last year from a friend after he got hit by a car, and went to try the new Sushi place in CampusTown right next to the University.

Guess what? It's affordable and it doesn't suck! I had some cali rolls and one of their house special rolls before shuffling back to artwork. And then I got my third nugget of "What a freakin day" happening to me. I sent off some of the artwork I drew in the past few years to Sixx Sense (Nikki Sixx's new radio show) and they posted up on the site. I'm very happy of this! A LOT of hours went into both of those pictures, so feel free to check them out over there on the site.


And I still have a few hours left before I ususally go to bed. What next?

Catch you guys later....

Rediscovering the Magic....

So after several weeks of hypothetically talking continually about the next video game project in school being Fantasy/Medieval in nature, I caved in last Sunday and watched Fellowship of the Ring for the first time since Return of the King came out on extended DVD. So what, five years or so? That period of time was like an overdose to my imagination: seeing Fellowship right on opening day, looking up at the screen in awe screaming "I want to do this for the rest of my life!", then Pirates of the Caribbean started to come out as well, combining swashbuckling adventures with epic war-scale fantasy movies. I think Fellowship of the Ring was actually the start of one of my artistic hobbies of creating costumes - probably even what led me to wanting to do conceptual artwork in general. I practically adored Aragorn's "Strider" outfit, and immediately started making hundreds of sketches of trying to make a female ranger outfit. (that's right, boys and girls: screw being one of the female characters, I wanted Aragorn's frickin sword and duster jacket. The amount of thought and detail that went into damn near each stitch......) After finding out what the details were with the special features included in the Extended Editions, I begged my parents for each movie for christmas, happily spending the first week after that holiday pouring over all of the special features and behind-the-scenes before ever even touching the first two DVDs in the series. As an anniversary gift in high school, my bf got me a copy of "Weapons and Warfare" of Middle-Earth, detailing every pauldron and vambrace and niche in each race's armor. The fact that a lot of the dress and such were based on blends of different cultures in real history....that just made it more awesome.

I wanted to describe the initial attraction to the Middle-Earth series first so you'd get where I'm coming from. Back in high school my parents got me Aragorn's sword Aundril, and the sword itself came up in my head while thinking about getting a new photoshoot done. I haven't had a good series of photos taken in a few years, and personally, I think a portfolio is made more personable if you have a current photo of yourself on the "About the Artist" page. If you can pull off looking like a creative, intelligent person who's fun to work with/be around (but knows how to keep to a schedule/etc), then I think you look like a creative (and hireable!) artist. I decided on a "geek chick of awesomeness" motif. We'll see if it works out at all...and damnit, I wish that Aundril's scabbard was cheaper than $125......

Anyway, when I put the DVD in on Sunday, I was just going to have it as background sound while I worked, occasionally glancing up and smiling at the badass action scenes or anything else. Nope. I had to watch the whole thing and immediately start scribbling down ideas for new garb for April. I figure that if no one else that I've seen in the SCA so far is being a huge stickler for historical accuracy, I can start playing designer as long as I find people to help me sew it together. I'm slowly improving on building clothing, it just takes for freakin ever. Will probably post pictures when I get some color schemes up. In similar news: who the hell thought the bright gaudy-ass clothing for LOTR online was a good idea? Seriously....way to kill me ever wanting to play the game.

that's my ramble for this week. If you see me out running around with a big frickin sword.....well......I warned ya.

Hey wait, I wasn't done with the last one yet!

Another week's gone by. It barely feels like it. Another freakin week....And I'm watching the snow pile up outside and the first Pirates of the Caribbean on the TV. I can't find my copy, and now I want to swagger around so badly. Or get into a sword fight with a skeleton.

Anyway, yeah. More work is being done on Ortus, though I look at everything I've done so far and try not to vomit. A lot of this stuff is NOT my best work. That being said, I guess I'm learning a lot since I've been trying to sketch without using the lineart as a part of the final piece. I've got working names for my hero and villain (Art and Vladamir, I think.), and we're going to start working on the 3D renders before we start project 2 for the class, which is working on the game with my other class, 491. This last week was rather rough on me with home life, and this weekend hopefully settled that out a little bit. Instead, next few weekends are going to be replaced with a friend's birthday party and getting ready for Rites of Spring. And getting my garb put together for said event. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't wear myself into a pulp by the end of this.