Still Rockin On.

Hi all. I may not have been posting recently, but I assure you I've been working on fun things. To answer a few common questions:

- Yes, the Heart game is still in production and is coming along nicely.
- Yes, I do make hip-hop instrumentals as a hobby. You can find my finished beats at onemrbeats.blogspot.com.
- No, I won't be posting any animation from my senior thesis until sometime next year. It's a slow and loving process.

Recently, I've been working each day on my senior thesis with my partner Patrick, slowly bringing our vision to reality (I mean virtual reality, right?). I've also been putting together a senior portfolio of my work, so expect a nice little link to my portfolio website in the coming weeks.

Other than that, enjoy the self portrait posted above. I think I was excited to get laceless shoes for the first time. They're treating me mighty fine to this day.

Hearts Are Meant To Be Played With!

I've wasted no time this summer vacation starting work on a new Flash game. I have far too much sudden freetime and motivation to create something new to not take advantage of that dead space between school and a summer job. Production is already well underway in both programming and art direction. Here's some early work I did on deciding upon basic shapes. The colors may change, the shapes may change, but the general positioning of things is set in stone. I can't get too much into how the game works or even what kind of game it is. All I can say is that I'm excited to work on it and I'll keep you updated on any major progress points I hit along the way. Until then, enjoy the sunshine and be productive in your journeys!

Kinkaku-ji: The Golden Pavilion

I recently finished up work on a gaming level using the CryEngine 2 SDK. It was for my world and asset building class in the Game Art + Design minor. This is the first class of its kind, not just at Ringling, but in the world. That pretty much comes down to having the students in the class doing extensive research and trial & error in figuring out how to get things to work in this brand-new gaming engine. It's been a fun adventure learning how to create all elements of a world and make them work together.

My level is loosely based upon an actual building in Kyoto, Japan called Kinkaku-ji, or The Golden Pavilion. It used to be a retirement home for a shogun in the 1300s, but later became a Zen temple. It actually burned down twice, which is cool that it's still standing today. There's even a live webcam feed showing it off 24/7. I picked this building as my reference based solely upon the beauty of the building and the surrounding area during winter, when the snow falls enough to give a great contrast between the dark woods and the pond. The real challenge for this level was to build organic objects - like trees, rocks, grass, etc - from scratch, with no formal training in such a task. All in all, I like how it turned out.




And here's a shot of the temple at a different time of day, making use of a new color scheme to get a different mood.

I would have loved to get video of my level in action, but we're currently trying to work things out with video capturing software. It's pretty fun to move around in there, especially since the pond is frozen and you can run on top of it.

Three D Me

Here's a small taste of my Lip Sync caricature model that's being used for various exercises in Computer Animation this semester. We spent a while last semester planning out designs and storyboarding our animations, and this year we got to finally go ahead and build everything. Being an animation aficionado, I didn't start having real fun until a few weeks ago, so I'm glad things are in motion now.


And while we're at it, let's take a look at the full body, including a t-shirt I wish existed and some Superstar kicks. This also happens to be the stage used for my final Lip Sync animation, to be completed within a week. Take care and enjoy Spring, folks.

It's Animation Time!

And now it's time to show my work from last semester in my Computer Animation III class. We designed, modeled, textured, and rigged a character from scratch (mine being an alien with spikes named Prickle). Then we spent the rest of the semester making three 15 second animations, each one's production time lasting about 3 weeks. Click the images below to watch each one.




Expect some content from the current semester in my next update. In the meantime, enjoy these little guys!

Have You Blasted Your Metroids Today?

[located in the Games section]

It seems as if I had to have the semester end before I could make any progress on my Flash work. Thusly, this time of the year allowed me to finish working on Metroid Blaster, a game I started almost a year ago. The original purpose of the game was to take a beloved franchise (Metroid), change its genre (platformer/adventure to arcade action), change its controls (controller to keyboard/mouse), and see if it still functions.

As per usual with all of my Flash games, I always try to learn something new that could benefit me later. In this game, I finally dabbled in the world of stereo sound. Hopefully my effort in that department is working. Other than that, I had to cut a lot of content out of the game, for if I continued working on whatever I thought could be added, it probably would never get finished. Omitted items include missile powerups, various level designs, fusion Metroids, and a final boss Metroid that doesn't fit on the screen.

Many thanks to my beta testers that helped me out over the summer. And for those of you Metroid fans that feel the need to mention it, I'm well-aware that there were never any Metroids in Old Brinstar. That level simply has a fond place in my pixelated memory. Have fun playing and enjoy.

The Bean Bag, ver. 4. Finally.

The Bean Bag

I finally got around to updating the look of my website that showcases my work in Flash, including games, experiments, and animations from the past that I'm glad I've learned from. I went for simple this time around, making sure that it doesn't take too long to get to anything on the site.

The bad news is that there's nothing new on the site content-wise. The good news is that I'll be adding a game I've been working on for a few months relatively soon. I just have some things to tighten up before it goes live. I suppose more good news is that all of my games work in Firefox now, which had nothing to do with me. Firefox simply doesn't support a feature that naturally works in IE. It's been resolved on my end, though, so everything should be fully functional now. Enjoy.

Informal Introductions

Greetings Everyone,
As you no doubt have guessed, this is my blog. I thought I'd start things off with a piece from my Drawing for Animators class. The first image shows the general order of progression I went through to get the composition, while the second image is my final piece, after adding values, color, blurs, and other assorted visual candies. I rather enjoyed working on this piece.


And the final drawing:

That'll be about it for now. I plan to use this blog for school work - including animations, images, and gaming materials - as well as things for fun, such as Flash experiments and games. It should be pretty fun as I get more content here. Until then, enjoy yourselves.