Friday, July 27, 2012

Finishing Richard and Other Oddjobs

I was doing pretty good with updates for a bit with updates but it looks like time got away from me a bit! Some of the biggest news on this update is that I finally finished my Richard maquette and he is featured in the top 10 finalists in the Looking for Group's Dick-Craft contest! Regardless of whether I win, I had a great time building Richard and am thoroughly pleased with the end result; my wife and I will enjoy having him on our shelf for our foreseeable future. Plus, we might just get a chance to get him autographed at GenCon by LFG's creators! 
Fully sculpted and painting started

The finished result!
On the animation front, I've decided to learn some things on my own via Digital Tutors. I've been working primarily on learning a bit more about character rigging, taking a page from one of my technical friends' book. So far it's been a pretty interesting course and I'll definitely try to keep some of workflow in mind for future projects. I plan on animating a walk cycle with the character after all the rigging work and toss the video up on here; I'm also hoping that I might be able to persuade a friend of mine to let me borrow one of his character models and test out my rigging knowledge!

Building the feet and legs
Adding in the spine
Spine and neck controls


Building the arm and hand joints
Arm and hand controllers

To stay on the animation topic for a bit longer, I've been trying to get some work done on a short film that another associate of mine has been trying to finish for some time now. I've gotten a few things taken care of for it, mainly in taking inventory of all the different shots that need to be finished as well as setting up a VPN so I can get access to the work files. I'm still really hoping to get some decent work done on the film here in the near future but this past week has been rather heavy. I've still been sending out applications and resumes whenever I get a chance, whether in my field or something to pay the bills; I've had a couple of responses here and there but nothing terribly promising.
      With still looking for steady work, I wound up helping my dad out at the auto shop; they're relocating the body shop and had to move a galvanized steel paint booth across the grounds and reassemble it. The past few days consisted of getting out to the shop early in the day, ripping out plywood, lifting and bolting together the steel panels, and using a grinder and pry-bar to take off some hinges. It's definitely been some hard work and I really respect my dad and his co-workers who do that job and others like it on a daily basis; my hat is off to them!

On to the gaming front! I've finished a couple of my ventures while continuing to add to my pile of shame (damn you Steam and GOG.com). During the Steam sale, I picked up From Dust, Legend of Grimrock, Dear Esther, The Witcher and The Witcher 2... like I said, damn you Steam and Good Old Games! Other than installing those, I haven't had a chance to touch 'em. That being said, I did finish a handful of games; I wrapped up Bulletstorm, Braid, and Max Payne 3. I really enjoyed Bulletstorm and all of it's salty language, over-the-top nature, and fantastic weapons. Was the story that original? No, not really. Was it fun to play? Absolutely. I loved the Skillshot mechanics and I was always looking for new or interesting ways to take out enemies. It really is a fun game as long as you don't try to take things too seriously and definitely worth picking up, especially at the prices you can find it for now. 
        For the most part, I enjoyed my playthrough of Braid; the time-space gameplay mechanics were really interesting and entertaining to work with and the visuals were dripping with style. It's kind of like a neo-impressionist version of Super Mario, if that makes any kind of sense. The story was well-done and definitely kept me interested. My only real negative is that some of puzzles got to the point of being pretty much absurd; they were still solvable but they didn't necessarily give you that self-satisfied elation that the likes of Portal would do. I would still recommend it to anyone that hasn't gotten their hands on it yet.
        Max Payne 3. I enjoyed parts of it but on the whole, this game just did not feel like Max to me. The gunplay was there. The bullet-time was there. Max was kind of there. Gone was the traditional graphic novel story-telling, dark comedy, femme fatales, and any characters worth caring about; it was very nice of Rockstar to write a fairly flat character into Max's past in order to justify uprooting the drunkard. More often than not, I found myself asking why does Max care about what he's doing even as Max asked himself that very question. I also came to a startling realization that I spent most of the game hiding behind cover rather than diving across the room in a blazing ballet of bullets. For the most part, my gun-dives were rewarded with quick deaths and a great deal of frustration. 
      The gameplay animation was really impressive, I will admit that; however, it seemed for such a fast-paced game that Max took his precious time raising his gun before firing a shot, often times resulting in the ex-cop catching more than a few enemy bullets before ever cocking his weapon. One nagging frustration for me is that it always felt like the game was rushing you from point A to B without ever giving you time to explore the environment for their new "clue" system or golden gun parts. In the earlier levels, whenever you would take more than a second to look at something, you would be constantly berated by Passos until you moved on; it was frustrating, irritating, and did a real disservice to the artists that built those environments. In an effort to cut this soapbox short, I will go ahead and say this: the gameplay was alright and it was a decent third-person shooter but this is not the Max Payne that most of us grew up with. 
      I'm still working on a lot of the same games I was last time, pretty sure I'm getting close to finishing Far Cry and I just started Duke Nukem Forever. I know what most people would say when they see that last one but I'll be honest: I was curious and it didn't cost that much. I'm only a few hours in but the gameplay is fine, the humor is sophomoric at best, and the visuals are nothing to write home about. But you know what? I'm enjoying it and having great time playing it. I'm not sure what that says about me but I'm not sure if I really care. Games are meant to be entertaining in some fashion and so far that's what Duke is, low-brow as it may be. 





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