The best part of this blog assignment all year was being able to highlight the work that I've done in this class. I think the blog has given me more insight into my work, my work ethnic, and what I want to do in the future. To be honest, the blog assignment has been kind of a chore for me to do because I don't like writing assignments. There were at some weeks that I did feel good about the reflections that I posted but other weeks where the blog did not feel like a helpful assignment. However, these blogs have given me some insight into my work patterns and how I tackle each assignment throughout the week, so in some sense that was helpful. I do plan on updating my portfolio and polishing it to make it seem more professional. I like the idea of having a place to review all of my weekly work.
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This year was pretty fun in Scientific Visualization. The most important information that I learned this year has to be copyright information. I feel like, as an artist, that issue will come up more and more. Now I understand what infringement means and how to avoid it. I also know that I need to protect my own artwork and makes sure no one steals it. This is information that I will definitely use in the future. If I, or someone I know, runs into a copyright problem, I have an idea of what to expect and how to handle it. The hardest part of this class is the amount of studying that is needed. I didn't necessarily find any of the concepts too difficult but I now realize that I didn't study enough at different points in the year which resulted in lower quiz grades. I don't really have any suggestions for changing the curriculum. One thing that might be better is to change the format of the information sometimes. Studying the information in a powerpoint presentation was hard.
Over the past week, I have not been using many tutorials because I've been in the section of work that requires you to do a bunch of things on your own. For instance, I've been working on the terrain project where I had to place all of my previous work into a scene, including the spaceship, snowman, Franklin, and flowers and rocks. Although, my favorite tutorial on 3D Max has been the Spaceship tutorial due to the impressive amount of modeling that you can use to turn a single box into a spaceship. During that tutorial, I learned to use specific modifiers like the editable poly modifier. I learned extensively about the tools within that modifier such as the extrude tool, the bevel tool, and the spin tool. I also learned how to edit with points, faces, and lines. Combined with the standard tools, you can create a spaceship. I can use the editable poly modifier in the future to create much more complicated 3D models from standard primitives. This is incredibly important to modeling in general.
Personally, I think this is going to be one of the most difficult units because the material is pretty boring. It's all about information and how a computer processes that information. It's also about how humans interact with computers. Another part of this unit was copyright information which important but not that interesting. There were a few gray areas on the quiz that I was uncertain about and need to work on. Otherwise, the quiz was not too bad. I need to review how long you can use parts of a video without infringing on the copyright. I need to find out what uses a diode laser to read information.
After reading the information about file formats, here's what I learned.
TIFF: This is a flexible format that can be either lossy or lossless. There is no external software to change the compression from lossy to lossless. Everything is internal. The file sizes are usually very big. Big digital cameras typically use this type of file. PNG: This is a lossless storage format which means that it looks for patterns in the image to compress and copy over a larger scale. Once compressed, it can completely convert back to it's original format, if needed. PNG works best with photos with large areas with uniform colors but more than 256 colors in the image. GIF: This format can support up to 256 colors from a pool of 600 million. If an image has more than 256 colors, it uses the nearest color to represent a pixel. If less than 256 colors, it creates the image exactly. GIF files compress in two different ways. First it can reduce the number of colors. Secondly, it replaces commonly used patterns. GIF can sometimes lose 99.998% of colors in color rich images. GIF files are best used with images that have less than 256 colors. They can also be used to support short animations. JPEG: This format is optimized for photographs. They have the ability to keep the image smooth and clear while keeping the file size minimal. The degree of compression is adjustable from the standard 24 bit scale. JPEG files are very common across the internet. RAW: These files are used by some digital cameras. They have smaller file sizes than TIFF which means they have smaller download times. RAW files are used differently by different manufacturers so editing can be harder. BMP: Uncompressed files that are used by specific publisher. They are unnecessary. PSD/PSP: These files are used for specific program graphics. For instance Photoshop uses PSD and Paint Pro uses PSP. Editing is very easy. They support multiple layers on a single image. When working with concept art and art for advertisement I would mainly use PSD, JPEG, and PNG files. I'd used PNG files in the early stages of development and while I'm in the process of still designing the project. I'd use JPEG for online artwork. I'd use PNG for posters and promotional art. This article talks about an important reference book for video game design, Drawing Basics and Video Game Art. It explains that video game art and ascetics is an evolution of art made in the Renaissance by famous artists like Michelangelo and Tintoretto. There are fundamentals of tangible artwork that can be incorporated into video game artwork, such as a sense of gravity, motion, color, and range of motion. The best way to learn these skills is to copy art from artists that inspire you. Sketching in simplified forms help to master a specific technique that you can focus on and improve. This technique was not only used by Renaissance artists, it's still an important technique used in modern video game design. I can easily incorporate these concepts into my character art. I can practice artwork by copying characters from other video games like Legend of Zelda and Ratchet and Clank. I actually taught myself a lot about drawing using Sonic the Hedgehog as a character model. I normally draw every day and will try to recreate a lot of different characters that I see in video games. Monday I was working on my video game layouts finished and put up in power point because I forgot I needed to use power point in the first place. So that took until Wednesday and by that point I began working on the Pitching a Video Game project which I am still working on now. I already had a fable to use for my game concept, so I started working on how the game would play out and beginning concept art for my idea. As of now I have Ideas and concept art for the hunter and doe and while I was making this I had to learn how to draw a doe in the first place, think of hunters with hunting weapons and create objectives for both. I also had trouble drawing a doe because before now I had never really tried so getting used to that was a little difficult. On Monday I plan to work on the Lion's concept art and objectives.
In photoshop, I learned how to draw a tree without using a pen and tablet. Instead, I used a mouse which I found to be considerably harder. Trees are natural objects so they have a natural movement to them. It's harder to capture with a mouse. However, if you stylize you artwork and use some the curved features and pen tools it becomes easier. The free transform tool is also very helpful for resizing an image or changing the perspective. This tool allows you to freely move pieces of the artwork around and to mold the shapes. I also learned how to use the dodge and burn tools. These tools are used to lighten or darken an image. These are pretty useful for shading and I will probably use them a lot. I've learned that using the keyboard shortcuts are really useful and quick, for example Control + Z is an undo feature.
Since doing these tutorials, I've gotten more confident with using Adobe Photoshop but I need a lot more practice. I have a lot more to learn if I want to use it efficiently. I was resistant because I really like to draw with pen and paper. I'm learning and getting better with Photoshop, but I think I will always like to use a pen and tablet better. The tutorial that I found the most useful to understanding Photoshop was the Beetle Car Tutorial. It made us work from a selling point of view and it showed us how we could use colors to our advantage. It explained some things that the Black and White tutorial did for us later on. It showed us how cropping and re-sizing is an incredibly useful application. We also had to change the color of an object. I'll probably use these techniques in advertising or marketing some designs.
The tutorial that I found the most useful to understanding Illustrator was the Pen Tutorial. It really showed me that the pen tool is incredibly effective and versatile. The Pen Tutorial taught me how to change the size of my stroke to create a different patterns. It also showed me the effectiveness of color and opacity. I will probably use the pen tool a lot to do stretch art, to create game assets, and for coloring and retexturing. I really like the pen selection feature. This is the image I worked on for the Beetle Car Tutorial. I edited the beetle pretty well. I was able to change the color and it looks good. I didn't really choose the background very well. I should have found a color that supported the color of the car and the logo better. My experience working with bitmaps is pretty good so far. I feel like I can use a lot of bitmaps in photo editing and game design. In photo editing, I can use it to change the color of certain items or add color to black and white images. I can resize items to make them fit better and create a theme. I can stylize an image based on it's background and items within the photo. In video game design, bitmaps allows me to create a 2D world with different settings and levels on a map. It also allows me to create 2D character designs and animations. I find the photo editing pretty useful and I like to experiment with it. The hardest part of using bitmaps compared to vector images is that I've had to adjust to the tools in one without being able to use the tools in the other. For example, I really liked using the shape creating tool and the pen tool in vector images because they have a lot of variety and were simple to use but the eraser tool was subpar at best. In bitmaps, I haven't found a shape creating tool and the pen tool is limited. The eraser tool in bitmaps is better and makes more sense. I prefer doing digital art in Illustrator because I like what I can do with it. |
Miles RomanHi, I am a student at Durham School of the Arts, and this blog will be documenting my experiences with my Game Design class. Categories
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