Project #4 Complete! Sort of...

I finished project four.  Didn't come out as epic as I hoped it would, probably because my lack of time and experience with the software.  But anyway, here it is.  The quality on Youtube isn't all that great though.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au1PmCdMPDY

I didn't bother with changing the initial title of the piece, the actual title is supposed to be Manasurge Prologue Pt. I

Project #4: Writing the story

I'm still in the process of writing the story for my narrative project.  I've already picked out the song to go with the video, which will be a combination of a sort of comic book frame narrative with some simple animation to go with it.  It's the story of a fictitious future in which someone triggers an apacalyptic disaster that breeds countless monsters, and after surviving that, we have to go to war against the evil archfiends that were born from this.  The story doesn't go into detail with plot, characters, etc., it's more of a summary of events.  Actually, it's the prologue of a video-game story that I'm developing.  I've written up a quick and dirty outline of the narrative just to help me organize my thoughts and get an idea of what kind of pictures and dialogue I'll need for this project.

Project #3 Endgame

Because I went back and started over, it took me longer than expected to finish.  But it's done, and here are the pictures I used for research.



I did make an effort to do my own background for this project, but it didn't work out so well.  As for the characters, I chose to copy the art style of Chrono trigger to get more detail into the sprites rather than using the even more distorted sprites of FF6.  This is the final result.

The thing about video games these days is, they're trying to get further and further away from the digital aesthetic, trying to make everything look as real as possible.  So I decided to take stuff from a game and instead of making the graphics better, making them lower quality instead.  Great graphics are nice and all, but they're not all-important.  So I took characters from Final Fantasy 7 and gave them a 16-bit makeover, making them look more similar to characters from FF6 or Chrono Trigger to give them a really retro feel.  There is a definite contrast here, much more so than there would've been if I had turned a different game into something retro.  Other ideas I had included doing something with Mass Effect, turning Devil May Cry into a side-scrolling brawler, and giving a Wolfenstein 3D look to a scene from Bioshock, but I settled on this since it's part of a much longer series spanning so many console generations.

Project #3 Sum of its parts

Okay, so I've made some of the characters for the FF7 scene that I'm retro-making for this project.  Sadly, they resemble the kind of crappy animation from cartoons typical of Adult Swim.  So I'm redesigning them to look even more digitized than before.  For starters, I'm using straight lines and perfect shapes wherever possible.  I'm also taking advantage of Photoshop's resources to make individual parts to be saved on their own and used with each other to make different pictures.  For example, I've designed a basic head that, when some minor details are altered, can be used for multiple characters so long as they're still human (there are two characters in the game that aren't human that this wouldn't work for, but I'm not using them anyway.)  Furthermore, each character will have a separate file with all of his/her individual parts saved separately in addition to the completed drawing.  It is an amazing thing, this Photoshop, for even those of us that are stuck doing old-fashioned frame-by-frame animation can still produce something in far less time than it would take for the process of using hand drawn frames to animate.  I'll have one still-scene prepared for Friday's class, and the animation and sound will come in the final project.

Project #3: Going back...

I've decided to take something from a popular video-game and redesign it with older graphics.  It is important to choose a game from a series for comparison purposes, and as such it is imperative that this franchise has been around for two or more console generations.  So I picked Final Fantasy VII, with the intention of redrawing the characters to resemble 16-bit sprites from the SNES as opposed to their original 32-bit forms.  FF7's predecessor, FF6, was on the SNES, so I feel that this conversion will serve to show how significant a difference the graphics made from one console to the next.

Project #2: The Clique Bears

This is my twisted parody of the Care Bears.  The idea behind it is that we all have to watch shows when we're little kids that try to teach us values that society deems necessary for us to believe in, and what happens when we get older?  We turn into people like this.  There are five highschool clique stereotypes here, from left to right: emo bear, nerd bear, jock bear, cheer bear, and my personal favorite, the punk bear.  But I find that the stereotypes are just as shallow as the childhood values that society tries to program into us.  So it may be a good thing that we left behind those childhood lessons because the world is too complex to live by such simple ideals.

Project #2 The final pieces

The following are pictures that I used to finish off the project.

Next, we have the three bears that I created and the background I selected, which is my favorite spot at my previous college.  The bears are supposed to be in highschool, but I don't think it makes a difference.

Project #2 still going...

It's been hard to work with the picture that I already found online to use.

Disgustingly cheerful, I know.  I was able to make a couple of pieces using this one...

...but now I'm afraid the original picture has outlived its usefulness.  I would rather find these bears in more useful poses if I can help it.  I still have several more pieces that I need to make, somewhere in between 3 and 5.

Chapter 1 Response

I thought that reading chapter 1 of the text book would be such a pain, what with all those pages to read.  But it wasn't so bad, a lot of pages were just pictures.  I find it rather amazing how much stuff can be done with digital tools, if I wasn't dead set on becoming a video game developer then digital art would definitely be an option.  There is a trend that I've noticed with digital and analogue photography, and that's how the photographer seems to go to a lot of trouble to set up just one or two pictures.  Like that one picture that was just the paths of lights made by people doing sign-language, there's no way anyone could figure that out just by looking at it.  I've had experience with photography before, in a class for black-and-white film photos, so I know about how dicey it can be to set something up.  Some photographer purists think that digital photography is the wrong way to go, that it's for people that want to take pictures without being professional or some such things but that's not what it's about.  Think about it, with digital cameras we can cut a lot of work from photography out of the equation, making production cleaner and more efficient and also allowing room for new things to be developed.  Another thing that got my attention were those 3D skewed skulls that were done.  It's such a cool and futuristic thing to be able to print things in 3D and could be really useful to me personally, if only I had access to the on campus 3D printer.  I like going to anime conventions, and I often need props to go with my costumes but I'm not much of a crafter.  So if I could just design 3D props on a computer and print them out, imagine the possibilities.  One last thing I'd like to know is if this text book will actually explain how to do any of these things ourselves, but other than that I've got nothing more to say.

Project #2 progress

Okay, so my original idea consisted of taking pictures of Dick Cheney and merging them with images of the Terminator and Darth Vader and whatever else that would show him to be as evil as he actually is.  A couple of problems occured.  First thing, such pictures are actually somewhat common.  Secondly, the images I found just weren't working out.  So that idea has been tossed in favor of another one.  The new idea is a parody of high school stereotypes starring the Care Bears.  I hope it works out, I'm too tired to think of anything else right now.  I'm not even going to bother hunting down a picture of a highschool on Google, seeing as how I live across the street from one or I could go visit my old one.  Maybe I can even talk to students there to get their ideas about clique stereotypes that I could use.  I've already decided on using the jock, cheerleader, nerd, slut, and emo types, but there must be others I haven't thought of.

Parody video (I think...)

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RY7_ZwgoeJM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I hope this works, I've never tried to post a video to a blog before.  Not sure it's a parody either, it does poke fun at rock bands and Woodstock and it sort of resembles an Abbot and Costello routine, and while it doesn't have any profound meaning it sure is funny.

Text and brush assignment

After finding a set of lightning brushes, I decided to throw in some lightning-related puns for good measure.

Project #1: She isn't real! Can't make her real...

I finally finished the project.  Here are the pieces that I used to make it with; shown above are just pics I found on Google.  Next, we have the original picture of the doll that I used to finish the project.  I planned on cutting all of her hair off at first, but then I decided to leave some and then give it and all its stuff to one of my little girl cousins.

I finished the project, after doing most of it on a Mac at school, on my PC at home, so I was hindered somewhat.  It's made me decide to buy a new mouse, but I digress.  Here is the completed picture.

The idea is that from the front, Paris, one of many women in Hollywood that supposedly demonstrate what beauty is supposed to look like, looks damn good for certain.  But the mirror shows us something else, shows us the truth behind the illusion.  She's just an empty shell, another puppet of the media used to brainwash the youth of America into believing in their idea of what female beauty is.  Don't get me wrong, I like the pretty girls too, but first of all, my standards aren't that ridiculously high, and second, I get turned off pretty quickly by abrasive personalities.  Now, the bloodstains and the dark, grainy look in the mirror are supposed to reflect (pun totally intended) the scary and masochistic aspects of the pursuit of this falsehood.  Like the fear of not fitting in felt by girls growing up and the scary things they sometimes do to their minds and bodies in order to be accepted by the rest of the sheeple.  And if you think about it, the concepts of plastic surgery and botox and all of that are really masochistic; we are allowing ourselves to be cut, stitched, and injected with chemicals here!  It's been going on like this for millenia in fact, good examples being Chinese foot binding and those painfully tight corsets that women used to wear back in merry old England.  Let's face it people, human beings are a seriously messed up species!  The point I'm trying to get across with this picture only demonstrates one of our flaws, there are so many to choose from.  Be a fake, Barbie-doll beauty for the masses that don't know any better, or be real for yourself; you decide.

Project #1: Hit a snag

Okay, so I checked out that DAZ 3D program that lets you make 3D stuff.  Turns out you still need to download things from their site (sometimes for a price) in order to do anything with it.  To top it all off, I couldn't find anything that resembles a doll/mannequin/puppet on their site and their 3D female characters look way too real for that to work.  So, I'm just going to modify an existing doll and take a picture of it.  Already got Photoshop on my laptop so it's mostly smooth sailing ahead.

New material

This is what I've got so far, I'm going to try to add in a 3D figure mannequin instead of that picture I saved earlier.  If it works it'll be a lot better, and I won't have to do the mirror within a mirror trick either.  Also, I've decided to leave out the film projector.

"Dave's not here man!"

digital art project 1

I found the pieces needed for the project.  My original idea was to set up a picture that showed a film projector "projecting" on an image of a family with a mirror behind them, reflecting nothing at all.  The idea was to demonstrate how contemporary pictures are often associated with memories, but that's all just an illusion.  I scrapped the part about the "family", deciding instead to show the illusion of ideal female beauty.  The family picture I found was of a family that looked so wholesome, so perfect, that I found it unbearably disgusting and couldn't stand looking at it.  The picture did need some level of artificiality, but this was too much.  I briefly read the article that the picture came with, said that the family was heavily Christian; that explains much.  Now I'm working with a picture of Paris Hilton, the most artificial female celebrity I know of (I have yet to confirm her existence as a human), a picture of a female mannequin, a mirror, a film projector, and an empty room.  Unless I can figure out how to flip the mannequin around, I'm going to have to do a mirror within a mirror trick.  Also, I have to erase that face, make it more creepy.

something stinks...

I've got to start going to school earlier in the morning.  I haven't had a problem with late buses yet, but what I do have a problem is that loud, smelly drunk that showed up on the bus this morning.  He was such an idiot, kept yelling and staggering about and flipping people off, I just wanted to break that finger of his.  See, then with it in a cast he'd be flipping people the bird whether he wants to or not, and it would get him into trouble.  Aside from that dumbass, the bus was too crowded anyway, definitely need to leave earlier in the morning.

art1531: The lost moogle

I kind of forgot the specifics of what I needed to do for this homework assignment, but I did manage to make a composite image by combining multiple pictures into one at least.  Poor Gurdy the moogle and her chocobo seem to have gotten lost, I guess they shouldn't've taken that left turn at Albequerque (sp?).

Test blog

Just making sure the blog is working.  Yeah, it's working.