Moving On.

Two years ago, I set up this blog as part of my Game Art Design degree course. Now I am entering my final year and I am moving my blog to my personal site: artofjonah.com

While it would have been nice to have one blog spanning all three years, the third year requires me to integrate my portfolio into my blog.

Unfortunately my new blog does not support subscribing by email. Moving forward, the best way to follow my blog is by following me on Facebook or Twitter.

If you've been following my progress here, I want to thank you very much for supporting me! It really means a lot. I hope you've enjoyed these first two years. I'm looking forward to many more and I hope you'll join me over at artofjonah.com/blog

Summer Update, Part II.

It's been quite a while now since my last post but, it's been a busy summer! I went to Beverly, Anya came to Leicester, I went home to Devon, we went to France, and then I moved back up to Leicester again. But in-between all that, I did find some time for art.

I lugged the laptop around with me and was able to get some painting done. I've been doing a lot of value studies because it's one of the fundamentals I struggle with the most. And faces because...they're just a step up from sphere's, right?

I'm quite pleased with how they turned out and what I learned. I took a couple of hours to paint the self portrait below and I feel like I'm improving. I'm still too slow though, hopefully speed will come in time.

I also had a lovely week in France visiting chateaus, family, kayaking and drinking too much wine. The first chateau we visited was the chateau de Chambord. It was absolutely breathtaking and a brilliant day out. But I mention it here because they have a new type of guide available. They call it the 'histopad' and I found it really interesting. 

It's basically an iPad mini running an app, that functions as an interactive map and an augmented reality guide. So it shows you where you are, you point it at stuff and it tells you about what you're looking at. But it also shows you a 360° recreation of the room you're standing in, so you can visualize what it looked like when it was in use during the 16th century. You can even examine some of the 3D objects in the room and get an explanation of how it would have been used. I was really impressed, it's the future man!

My nomad came with me to France and I did a bit of sketching when I had time. The chateau de Chanonceau was particularly sketchogenic so I tried to do it justice and spent a fair bit of time there. I finished the drawing at home and it turned out pretty good.

A photo posted by Jonah Holden-Maillard (@jonahsketch) on Aug 26, 2015 at 6:25am PDT

And finally, I finished that gun I was working on, the AMT Hardballer model. I took my time with it and learned something new at every stage of the process, including Substance Painter which I'm rather taken with.

I put the finishing touches on my new website - artofjonah.com, so you can have a closer gander at the AMT Hardballer there if you like. I'd love some feedback on the gun or the website!

Oh and I also finished that FMP prototype I was talking about in my last post, but that probably deserves a post on it's own. 

For now I'm out of time, I'm about to jump on a train to London. I'm off to Industry Workshops for the weekend! Maybe see some of you there :)

Summer Update, Part I.

We're now over half way into 2015 and the summer holidays are well under way. Last week we all received our results for the year. I got what I expected and I'm fairly pleased. It was a tough year, but I feel I've improved a little since first year and my grades reflected that.

That said, I do not feel ready for third year. I still have so much to learn. So I’ve continued working into the summer on several personal projects. One of these is to create a realistic, next-gen, AMT Hardballer hand gun, with the intention of improving my subdivision modelling and learning Substance Painter.

I’ve not done a lot of high poly stuff in 3DS Max and right now, I’m pretty slow. But I’m happy to spend the time on it, so long as I keep enjoying myself, keep learning new things and keep getting faster. When I finished the high poly, I posted it online and got some great feedback. I made my corrections and now I'm on to the low poly.

Aside from that, I've been really cutting back on social media. I've stopped posting my 2D work all together. Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a rant, but it has made a huge difference!

Recently, my attitude towards painting and drawing transitioned from 'work' to 'hobby'. 3D is now very clearly what I want to do for a living and 2D is a challenging, mostly enjoyable pastime. Disentangling Facebook from my hobby has been exceedingly liberating.

I've also found time to read again and have been tearing through my enormous back log of books. I'm pretty bad at making time to read during term time, which is a shame because it's something I really enjoy. But now it's the holidays and I don't feel guilty about taking a couple of hours a day to read, whether it's novels or non-fiction. I've found it really refreshing and even did a few studies from one of the painting books I finished.

Exercises from Digital Painting Techniques, Vol I.

However I'm a bit bored of doing studies, especially from photographs. I was finding them quite frustrating at one point until Anya pointed out that I was picking extremely difficult images. She picked a few easier ones out for me and things went a little more smoothly. Still, I should do more original paintings.

Snowy Mountain, photo study.

Rocky Hill, photo study.

And finally, I've been prototyping a racing game. One of my stronger final major project ideas for next year. I've managed to get a short track up and running with checkpoints, a lap timer and a 'best time' high score thing. It was actually not a lot of work, so providing I can keep the level a manageable size, it's shaping up to be a pretty good option. The thing I need to look at next is how vehicles work in Unreal Engine, but how hard can it be?

Hope everyone's having a lovely summer!

Week 32, Year 2: Alice's Adventures Off The Map Post-Mortem.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that for the past 14 weeks I have been working on a project with 5 other Game Art students called Alice’s Adventures, Off the Map. Hosted by GameCity, Off the Map challenges students to use collections from the British Library as inspiration to create interactive digital media. DMU has participated since it began a few years ago as part of the second year curriculum. Game Art students in the past have been very successful and all of us were very excited for the competition. So at the start of February, we were placed into teams, given the brief and cut loose.

In our first team meeting, we began by discussing how we could impress the judges and win the competition. This was our first and probably most severe mistake. Of all the changes, difficulties and decisions I’ll discuss here, I feel this mind-set right from the start was the greatest hindrance to our project. Despite being a team of artists, we felt pressed to create a game. A complete and well-rounded interactive experience. Because of this, all of our early work and decisions were driven by trying to create a game. Something none of us have any experience in. What we should have done is play to our strengths. We should have designed a world first, and then added interactive elements and gameplay. While that statement flies in the face of conventional game design, we are not a conventional game development team. We are a team of 6 artists. It’s a question of priorities and our first priority should have always been simply, create something beautiful.

Of the three themes we could choose from, we picked Oxford, as we felt it was the most interesting. In the first week, I organised a trip to visit Oxford for a day, to gather reference, get a feel for the town and search for inspiration. Hiring a car was expensive and planning it all was exhausting, but it was one of the best things we did. It brought us closer as a team, we had a great time and it got us out of Leicester for a day. I’ve come to really appreciate that a change of scene is absolutely invaluable.

The closest we got to a team photo.

In the first few weeks we also setup a blog. Having a tool to divide the documentation work, right from the start, worked really well. None of us like to write when there's painting to be done, but updating it regularly allowed us to stay on top of it as a team. We found it very useful to keep our tutors in the loop throughout the project and notify them of any changes.

One of the biggest changes that took place was the decision to move from our original 'courtyard, street and river bank' idea, to the 'foggy streets' plan, in an attempt to cut back the amount of assets we'd need to create. While it was a good decision, it was made too hastily. We did need to dramatically reduce the scope of our project, but we did so without taking the time to properly visualize the new idea.

Layout plans. 'Foggy streets' (left) and 'river bank' (right).

Visualization ought to have played a central role to our work, however I feel we severely neglected that critical part of the process. As a team, we didn't take concepting as seriously as we should have and we were too distracted by 'the game idea'. The majority of the early concepts we produced were paintings for the sake of painting. With the exception of a good deal of overpaints, the lack of visual development throughout was another major barrier to a successful final outcome.

I especially missed an opportunity to do more concepting at the start of the project, but as usual it seems I was distracted by technical problems. My primary complaint these past few months has been feeling shackled to the engine. I learned a lot, but being the sole 'engine guy' was quite miserable, especially towards the end. However in hindsight this was largely self-inflicted, as we could have made major improvements in the way we divided the work.

Once a level reaches a certain size, using the usual 'make a list and distribute it evenly' method of assigning assets is inadequate. I learned this too late unfortunately, but it's a mistake I won't repeat. If I were to go back and do it again, I would allocate work by area, rather than by each individual asset. Everyone would be responsible for their section of the level, from concepting through to engine. This would diversify the work load, encourage team members to take pride in the key areas rather than individual assets, and promote seeking help and feedback from one another.

 The Apothecary.

The Lane.

The Streets.

The Alley.

The Florist.

The Garden.

I am left with mixed feelings at the end of this project. As you may have guessed at this point, I'm quite disappointed with our final outcome. We could have produced something of much higher quality, if we had only made better decisions. Our team should have achieved something vastly superior to what we did, but while we all work well individually, for a variety of reasons we don't work well as a group. This has been a monumentally frustrating experience, but I do feel I learned from it.

A small, masochistic part of me wants to go back and do it again, now that I can see all the places we took a wrong turn. But a big part of me is just glad it's over. Still, for next time:

• Visual Development and Communication is pivotal to the success of a project. Concepts should only serve to move an idea forward and improve the project. In future, I'll take this more seriously and ensure that I'm not wasting time with pretty pictures.
• An opportunity for a change of scene shouldn't be missed. We all probably spend too much time behind our desks. I certainly do, so next year I'm going to make more of an effort to visit different places.
• Divide the work up by area, not by asset. I had previously thought that the best way to divide tasks in a group was to delineate the work as much as possible and allocate it based on individual strengths and weaknesses. I was wrong. Next time, I will divide the work by area and not shy away from assigning challenging tasks to team members.
• Encourage and support one another. I think I underestimate the value of positive reinforcement and it's something I could definitely improve. Moving forward I will make an effort to be more encouraging.
• Make decisions based on what will make life easier. Work smarter, not harder. At the beginning of this project, we were all encouraged to create a 3D side-scroller. We chose not to, which in hindsight was probably a big mistake. Had we done a side-scroller, we would have avoided a lot of the problems we encountered.

It feels like I've been working on this forever, even though it's only been a few months. But then again, it's the longest project I've worked on nearly 3 times over. It's been a hell of a ride but if it pays off next year, it'll all have been worth it. See you then.

Week 31, Year 2: Grouping Actors in Unreal Engine.

It's a week too early for a post-project rant about Off the Map, the deadline is this Friday, so instead I thought I'd put together a few quick tips and tricks regarding the groups feature in Unreal Engine. Grouping actors is extremely useful for managing sets of items in a level and something I've been using a lot this week. In this example, I'll show you how I took 4 books to fill the shelves in a shop, using groups and copying for speed, and mirroring to hide repetition.

Quick side note: In some cases, an actor blueprint may be more appropriate. The advantage of using groups is it's quick and very, very simple.

To get started, I take a shelf that's been filled with books and group the books by hitting Ctrl+G. A green bounding box will appear to signify a locked group. The actors in the group now share a single transform and can be manipulated as one. Shift+G ungroups the actors.

Each set of shelves is filled with a group of books. At this point I'll start to notice things that might need tweaking a bit, usually because they're floating or clipping in to something. A quick way to fix this is to unlock the group with Right Click > Groups > Unlock, which will turn the bounding box red and allow you to move the actors individually.

A quicker way is to simply toggle group mode with Ctrl+Shift+G whenever you need to make adjustments.

Now that I have my groups, I hold Alt+Drag them along an axis to copy them to the next shelf over. To avoid having two identical groups next to one another, I re-arrange and mirror each set.

In order to mirror an actor in Unreal Engine, you need to bind the command to a key. For some reason it's unbound by default. Go to Editor Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and search for Mirror. Bind the X, Y and Z mirror commands to any key you like, (I use Ctrl+Shift+X, Y and Z respectively) and you're good to go.

I repeat this process of copying, re-arranging and mirroring until all the shelves are filled. Once they're filled, I toggle groups off and start deleting books or replacing them with other assets to further break up the repetition.

So that's how I take 4 assets, whether they're books, drain pipes or houses and re-use them over and over again. Hopefully this helps a few people out and saves some time. Good luck for the hand in everyone!

Week 30, Year 2: Time Lord Resubmission Post-Mortem.

The 'dichotomy character project' was by far my weakest project of the year. Due to poor planning, an overambitious idea, and falling ill, I produced an absolutely atrocious pair of characters. Happily, we were all given the chance to resubmit the project before the end of the year, so I've been working on it in the evenings, in-between writing essays and working on Off the Map.

I decided to drop the second character stretch goal and just focus on getting the one character right. I had limited spare time to work on it, but I wanted to produce something polished all the same. This is also the first time I've used Zbrush for a complete sculpt. As the original model was such a disaster, I decided to totally redo it. I'm quite pleased with the results and it's certainly a vast improvement!

The face and clothes came out well but I struggled with the shoulder piece. I'm aware that amazing hard surface results are possible in Zbrush, but I'm not even close to proficient enough with the software to be able to achieve them. I knew this would be a sticking point for me so I chose to use the original Timelord design, despite it being quite flat and plain.

I would've liked to incorporate more asymmetrical elements and varied materials to break up the character. I feel the main thing that's lacking is complexity and visual interest. I focused too much on tinkering with the DOTA 2 shader, when I should've been painting textures and trying to match the art style rather than the tech stuff.

It was also my first crack at retopology. Surprisingly, it went very smoothly. It's definitely something I will use in the future, so it was nice to get my head around it. But it was a slow process, as the characters modular nature required me to retopologize it piece by piece. 

This also became very time consuming during texturing, as each piece requires a set of 10 maps and masks. As the character was broken up into 8 'components', I had to author 80 of these which slowed me down significantly.

I learned a lot from redoing this project. While the final result is far from perfect, I feel that if I was to repeat the project a third time, I would finally get it spot on.

So, next time I will:

• Use more asymmetrical elements, varied materials and visual complexity to add interest. I should settle on the design, down to the details, from the start of the project.
• Be mindful of the tri-count and how it will be rigged during the design process. I wasted triangles on the hands by modelling individual fingers, which would be rigged using a maximum of 3 bones. I could've also used more triangles to add more interest to the silhouette.
• Don't use a primarily visual project as a technical exercise. I should have ensured accurate anatomy and proportion were in place before worrying about tools and software. This was the root of a lot of the problems I encountered throughout both the original and re-submitted project.
• Plan better. The first time round, the plan was wildly overambitious. The second time round, I wasted time as a result of not planning enough. Had I reduced the number of modular pieces, I would've had more time for iteration and stretch goals.

Week 29, Year 2: Presentations.

First week back!..Aaand I need another holiday, the last one didn't count. I spent most of my working hours over Easter writing my reflective essay and redoing my character project. I also worked on Off the Map (a bit) and spent some time preparing the 'carte blanche' presentation, which I gave this week.

I chose to do my presentation on skydiving and the challenges of simulating flight in a wingsuiting game, such as Volo airsport. I wanted to do it on a subject that I felt was interesting and something from which I could draw on my own experience.

I was surprised by how nervous I was. It's amazing how difficult it is to stand in front of people and talk about a subject in a formal, coherent way. I had a script memorised which seemed fine in practice, but somehow being in front of other humans changes how you feel about it completely.

I didn't have a meltdown though and I got through it. Among other things, I could've spoken clearer and fidgeted less, but I hit all my points, I knew my slides well and the presentation hopefully came across as well prepared.

Plus anything with this gif in it's got to be pretty good, right?

The Birdly device.

It was remarked that my presentation could have touched on whether or not VR should even try to replicate the thrill of flying. My presentation actually began as just that, but I quickly realized that 3 minutes was not enough time. My first draft covered this as concisely as I could and I still ended up talking at a million miles an hour.

As I continued to research, practice and revise the presentation, it quickly became a pitch for a VR simulation game. I'm not sure that this was the best choice, but for this presentation it seems the content is the least important part. For next time, I learned:

• Before doing anything else, pick an appropriate topic and work out what is a reasonable amount of information to convey in the allocated time. Educate, convey an idea, or make a point, but be clear from the start.
• I get more nervous than I anticipate, but this isn't an issue as long as I've practiced my slides and I know the material very well.
• Even for extremely short, timed presentations, a 'script' may not be suitable. Consider the environment and be clear on the formality of the presentation from the start.

So I'm pretty stressed out at the moment, it seems like all the 'grade stuff' like essays and character projects have all sprung out at once. The deadline for all that is at the end of this week. 

At least after that I only have to work on one project until we finish for the year – in less than three weeks.