I received our goat with a makeshift rig so I could animate it for our presentation on Wednesday (today).  I animated this run cycle in about an hour.  It's alright.  I had my art III professor who is an animator look at it and critique it. He gave excellent pointers, like the neck should go down when the body is bending and inward.  This is no way final. once we get a better rig on the goat, I will put a final animation on him.


... I have no idea why the video is slanted ._.  I'll fix it when I figure it out.

We have a presentation coming soon and we needed art assets and quick.  So, instead of making new assets I decided to take some of our old ones and touch them up.  I took the cave and added stalactites and stalagmites for the player to dodge.  I also talked with the engineers to see how long it would take the player to go through the cave.  I didn't want so many obstacles going by too quickly and frustrate the player.  It turns out, each of our tiles, which are 40 x 40 squares in Maya, take the player 2 seconds to cross. Not a whole lot of time, so I placed the obstacles farther a part.

After a while though, it turned out best to take out the stalactites and stalagmites out of the cave mesh and make them their own separate object.  That way it will be easier to test them in the game and see where they can go.

As for textures, so far I've been using tiled/seamless textures, so my UV maps are kind of all over the place.  The other artist is going to re-texture our assets later.

Waterfalls

I've been sick for a couple of days, but that doesn't stop me from making me some waterfalls! WOO!  Before I hand it over to the programmers I will put it in Unity to see if it fits.  I am curious if I made it too big, and if so is it something the programmers could just re-size or if I have to do something.


A lot of this was inspired from The Paper Fox.  Their stuff is amazing.

Learning More About Time Management

I've made three tracks so far for our game that we can recycle throughout the game.  Yay for modular design!  However, I want to mention what happened with the first two tracks and what I learned.  It took me about 30 minutes to get the basic design for the ground and modeled out.  Then it took me hours, HOURS, trying to figure out texturing.  When it came for my stuff to be due, I had the geometry, but texturing was just so-so and not final.  I finally realized I shouldn't have put so much effort into the textures, as I can do that a bit later.  The programmers need the geometry as soon as possible so they can test it out.  With those hours spent on textures, I could have made more tracks and other things to populate our world.  With every game I've made I learned that it's all about timing and getting things out fast (yet efficient) to meet the deadlines.  So, I will henceforth create our geometry and put my basic textures on it and send it to the engineers ASAP.  I can worry about final textures later.


Then, we realized something.  It would be easier to create the geometry around the tracks in Unity, then place a paper texture on it.  It makes it easier for us artists and the engineers.

On a side note, I've started another blog for my Art III class!  Check it out! :D  www.sketchz.blogspot.com

Researching

Since I am now the environmental artist, I've been researching what I should do with my world and not just physically, but mentally as well.  What feeling am I trying to get across?  What colors should I use?  Our game is for that casual gaming family, so I don't want super harsh and dark colors.  I want bright and light and something inviting.  Now, should I make my dominant colors be reds and yellows since that color scheme is something you'd see in China?  This game IS based off a Chinese legend. Should there always bee an environmental landmark somewhere?  For example, maybe the player can constantly see the Jade Palace off in front of them so they know what they're running to. *sigh*  So many things to consider.  At least I know we are making our environment out of 3D tiles that the programmers will procedurally generate.  I have already gotten with one programmer to help me sort out measurements of the world I will create so we know we're on the same page when they program.

I googled 'paper worlds' and 'worlds made of paper' and got some interesting results. I found out Media Molecule is creating a paper-craft game for the PlayStation Vita.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK6_QvdxyXQ  It looks really cool and it gives me hope, actually.  If they can pull off a paper-look with simple blocks and textures, well why can't we?  I just need to keep on trying!

Among that I found some other pictures to help me think about my paper world.