The Gremlins of a Developing Games Designer

In addition....

2011-12-23T23:28:00.004Z

In addition to modelling London Liverpool street (the steelwork and glass is done and in UDK) I've been modelling some low-poly station brickwork, giving the Normal Map converter in photoshop a bit of a run too.

just a quick render WiP.

Finished off the cover (kinda)

2011-12-23T16:47:00.003Z

I've done all I want to now on the cd cover I was working on.

Oh yeah, Nudybronque

2011-11-22T20:30:00.007Z

A few months ago, I did a little sketch, scanned it and painted it:

Then, a band called Nudybronque approached me about using it as the EP cover. Naturally I was thrilled and said yes.

They have another CD out soon, so have asked me for another piece of the same 'charater' that the fans have started calling 'Nudy'.

Here is a work in progress:

The rear is (hopefully) going to be the view from inside the fridge looking out at the Nudy.

Random, but I'm more famous than I was

2011-08-03T21:15:00.003+01:00

I'm now part of the national advertising campaign in work for Yell.com. So far I've been in The Times, The Sun, The Guardian, 'i' magazine, The Telegraph ... and undoubtable a few I've missed out. It's running for about 2 months, so keep an eye out for me. This is what the ads look like:

A few more WiP screens looking back into the station

2011-02-02T11:07:00.000Z

And looking over the roof, shiney glass.

Latest screenshots from Liverpool Street WiP

2011-02-01T16:01:00.004Z

New versions of supporting pillars used, changed some of the texture colours. Added the glass roof panes. Had a proper go at making some dramatic lighting in UDK with light beams and added in some rough idea of platforms.

Click for bigger versions. Worth it.

A few edits

2011-01-16T13:58:00.003Z

I made a few changes as I wanted to increase the grand sense of scale that I thought was lacking in the previous renditions.

I increased the span of the larger arches, I increased the height and slenderness of the pillars, so the roof is further off the ground, and I added roof 'panes' that will eventually be made from 'glass'.

Pretty Silhouette

2011-01-10T22:05:00.003Z

Silhouetted:
Screenshot from editor.

Liverpool street in UDK

2011-01-10T11:47:00.004Z

Maya modelling in modular form in UDK. Nothing special with the lighting yet.

The floor shadows look pretty good too.

Getting back into the modelling flow!

2011-01-09T14:40:00.003Z

Liverpool Street update:Simple maya render, but with greatly increased roof girder complexity.

All modular, so there's not one 50,000 poly model that can't be altered and played with.

New year, new reguime

2011-01-07T13:48:00.005Z

Right, It's been a crazy few months after graduating, now I'm settled in Twyford with some of my best mates from university. We're out of Newport and all starting on our own roads, carving our own little life out of the current financial soup of taxes and belt-tightening.

With a new year comes a renewed emphasis on the continuous production of self-directed work. To help convey what sort of stuff we have on our plate, the 4 of us in Twyford all did the Games Design course at Newport, and crave to produce more output, be it modelling, animation, designs, artwork, websites, 2d or 3d games. Our initial intent was 100% a 2d android game, having inherited a game design and assets from the liquidated Dark Rock Games. We started investigating Android SDK and worked out the basic tutorial apps. This is still in the works, but our lack of programming expertise is greatly slowing us down.

Gota take my hat of to the other 3 guys here, they have all secured Games Tester jobs at TTGames. With that comes a whole shed load of hours, so I can appreciate if learning Android SDK or indeed doing ANYTHING games related at the end of the day is the last thing on their mind!

So, as a secondary option, drawing more on what we as technical designers, we are investigating a 3d game engine for android smartphones and applying a 2d approach to it. Hopefully, our 2d ideas and plans can be pulled off in a 3d environment which we are all more confortable with.
As far as personal projects are going, I've got a few in the pipeline (don't we all?). Myself and Pat are storyboarding an animation about the expanding leading edge of space, and the snowplough-esque machine that is turning over the black matter into the empty nothingness. Quite excited about this one.

To keep my modelling and Unreal skills in check, I'm modelling London Liverpool Street station and constructing a version of it in UDK:

The catalyst for this project was seeing this: http://shownd.com/serg/17223/London-Bridge-Underground-station and thinking 'I bet I could do better than that'. So far i've probably spend about 4 hours on it, including construction and build in unreal. I'm still sketching, the long intermittent train journeys home require some entertainment.

Just to wrap up, a list of the stuff I've done since the last post (mid 2010):

- Moved to Twyford
- Got a job at Yell.com doing website QA
- Got on twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/rhysthomas88)
- Set up my website and portfolio at www.rhysgthomas.co.uk
- Got business cards printed, to my design and with samples of my work on them
- Presented Romley Court at Gamecity 2010
- Went to Develop 2010 with Eric, down in Brighton (that was amazing, regardless of the £500 conference ticket price) and diplayed Romley Court, met Jasper Konning from Romino Games (amongst many others including rick stein from epic)
- Finished off www.mudconcrete.com
- Entered Romley Court into Europrix Multimedia Awards, for out category to be dropped from the nominations...grrrr...and some stupid flying penguin game set to heavy dance music get nominated in 'best game'!
- Written a column piece for a minor web newsletter
- Watched England trounce the Aussies in the Ashes

Pretty sure I missed a few, but thats what i can remember and are relevant. Hopefully check back in with some more Liverpool Street images in the next few days.

The End

2010-06-12T14:14:00.003+01:00

Ive come to the end of my 3 year games design course and iv'e enjoyed every minute of it. Our graduate game 'Romley Court' has been a resounding success, the whole team getting A15's for it. On top of my A14 for my dissertation, i have graduated with a 1st. Now to sort out some mudconcrete.com website business.

Ship in situ

2010-02-26T14:24:00.001Z

New Mod DB Profile

2010-02-24T23:45:00.000Z

http://www.moddb.com/members/rhysthomas

and theres links to our 'Portrait' MOD profile on there too

Newport Medievil Boat

2010-02-20T18:00:00.004Z

In Second Life:

See it at 'IDL Newport Hub' in Second Life

Boat

2010-02-04T04:02:00.001Z

Pretty much finished model of Newport medievil ship.

Global Game Jam 2010

2010-01-31T22:48:00.002Z

Attended my second year on the trot. After a fairly successful last year i attended late for this one, and with Kelvin Ferris managed to rustle up this little 'game'. Not really a game, the lack of objectives is because it is unfinished, but you get the feeling and appearance of what we wanted.

http://www.globalgamejam.org/2010/global-game-jam-game-jam-maze-game

check out the other games from the event, and remember to vote 5 stars on mine.

Modelling for Second Life

2010-01-29T16:19:00.002Z

Modelling Newport's Medievil Ship for use in Newport's Second Life island. WiP

Link to current project blog

2009-11-13T23:41:00.003Z

Heres a link to the blog for my 3rd year final major project. Myself, pat, leah and eric are working on a georgian themed explorative game highly narrative heavy.

http://fmpdev.blogspot.com/

maya renders in mental ray

2009-09-02T18:56:00.000+01:00

gorgeous

2009-08-29T13:11:00.000+01:00

This short film is just gorgeous, i really like the art style.

http://dekku.nofatclips.com/2009/08/rhian-sheehan-standing-in-silence-pt-3-nivas-tune.html

Just a bit more

2009-08-29T13:07:00.001+01:00

More work with the more advanced rendering options in maya. May very well move onto shaders next.

Day Off

2009-08-08T23:32:00.003+01:00

Its the weekend! And after a day off on Friday to recharge, i have charged headlong into more maya skills expanding. Here's the final result:
(i will post up the development at some point too - i took shots at various stages.)

big version here (very much worth the jump for the extra detail)

Done more on my website too, and made some decisions that means I'm a lot more happy with it now. Also bought a Wah pedal and distortion box for my guitar, so I've been putting those through their paces too. Recorded a little improv song using a blues - style wah effect. Will link when i get them uploaded somewhere. A busy few days, but i do relish it.

Work

2009-07-13T23:05:00.002+01:00

The mundane tap of keys as another faceless trainee has their details inputted onto a national database. 9-5 every day doing the same thing for 8 hours leaves me so drained. Personal work is still progressing but is very intermittent, dependent on how braindead i am. Can't wait to actually start a career and do what i crave for. There's very little scope in an office of middle aged women for anything outside of internal bickering, stressed groaning and deflating sighs.

Uploads soon.

Some of my photography work

2009-06-18T17:27:00.008+01:00

A collection of shots from a recent trip to Tenby, South Wales.

Update on my Gallery Space

2009-06-16T12:56:00.003+01:00

Did some more work on my website, including getting to grips with bump mapping. All good fun:

WiP on my personal site

2009-06-11T00:20:00.002+01:00

Blog crazy

2009-06-09T00:09:00.003+01:00

There's a whole tonne of stuff that i need to get done soon, before I start work proper end of this month:

- Finish my own personal website and buy a domain name - Underway, I'm rendering out 24 frames of a rotating camera in the middle of a room. treated like a gallery space, I'm then stitching the frames together to make one long image in PS, putting it into flash, allowing the user to scroll left and right, so it appears they are navigating a 3d room. add in some clickable buttons and 'frames' to show my work etc and I'm sorted. just have to remember to keep the filesize down.

- Write a detailed concept doc for Royal Riddle Racer, detailing exactly the mechanic etc...

- Design and make a website for the game and the team, to fit with the concept doc, and have a list of games competitions we can enter it into. Then also buy a domain for it. RoyalRiddleRacer.com maybe?

- Start compiling research for my dissertation, hopefully start writing it too.

- Miscellaneous portfolio work, finishing old projects / drawing / painting / animating / modeling / rigging / texturing.

- Learn Unreal Engine 3 inside out!

- Learn how to export normal maps from zbrush onto lower poly models in Maya.

Response 6

2009-06-09T00:08:00.002+01:00

The last one before the final clip that would end the conversation. Modeled, rendered, animated, and motion blur in Maya, text and darkening in AE. This one goes way too fast, i was trying to pack too many things in. I also rendered out the fly through twice, one in the purple tinted sunset, second time at night with atmospheric spotlights with the intention of flicking between the 2. didn't quite work out.

The fleeting feeling of joy and affection, but pulled out of this state by memories of the past.

Response 5

2009-06-08T23:50:00.002+01:00

Todd and I both decided to do an animation including guitars after a talk with Ian, and his musically ignorant flat-mate.

This was a (maybe too much) forceful attempt to give a history and context for the 2 characters, not particularly successful, but i can mention i did the guitar in the background. :)

Response 4

2009-06-08T23:47:00.003+01:00

Gladly, this clip got chosen to appear in the final film. Remembering to animate in AE instead of Flash, i played round with layering and 3d layers.

This was similar to the previous one in the fact it was slightly reminiscent on where the conversation had gotten to. going through the many layers of conversation to see our and Ian's characters in the same space, but not touching, not on the same layer suggesting a tension there.

Response 3

2009-06-08T23:43:00.003+01:00

I'm not happy with this one, again Flash export issues meant some neat little touches got lost, why did i not learn from last time???? dang it! it just ended up being far too sparse and amateur.

This is supposed to be a commentary on the conversation so far, it felt like it was re-tracing old ground, so i wanted to show the fact that it was treading back and forth. The duck imagery is taken from Ian's response that went before.

Response 2

2009-06-08T23:37:00.002+01:00

Wanted to go for something with a textural draw-you-in sort of feeling. Drawn and scanned into Photoshop for painting. Tried to comp it in Flash, and it messed up the focal shift when exporting the flash movie to quicktime. That will teach me to use After Effects now.

Something i started noticing was how much i could have improved it if i had an extra 5 hours and an extra 5 seconds. but the constraints made it more of a conveyance of the message to aid the conversation as appose to the polish of the animation.

Response 1

2009-06-08T23:33:00.002+01:00

Banana Phone

I worked in a group of 4, on this little mixture of 3D and drawn techniques. background modeled and then painted over in photoshop, animated phone modeled and animated in Maya, colour keyed and posterised in After Effects.

(awaiting vid)

May, in a nutshell

2009-06-08T23:23:00.003+01:00

Throughout May, I've been working in a little group of students with BAFTA award winning animator and director Ian Gouldstone. The aim, to create a short animated conversation between Ian and the individual students. Each student (or small group) would have 24 hours to respond to a 5 second animation instigated by Ian. Everyone would then show their animations and vote on the best one to go into the final film. Ian would then take this chosen clip, respond in a similar fashion and show it to us to respond back to the following day.

This went on for about 3 weeks, amassing an ungodly amount of 5 second animations. i was able to finish and submit 6, 1 of which got voted in and made it into the final film. Its a shame i didnt keep a regular daily blog during the period Ian was residing because there were some inspirational pieces shown.

I'll be posting up the compressed versions for viewing, in order of creation and submission.

Zbrush does graphic design

2009-05-17T17:46:00.003+01:00

Been playing round with zbrush, and exploring its kind of 'post rendering' tools. This was unplanned, using a program i just about know, fiddling with something it wasn't intended to do but i think it came out okay:

lovely little animation

2009-04-25T12:32:00.002+01:00

came across this on the internet. I REALLY like this, and am intruiged at how they went about making it. Take a look.

http://www.onwards.tv/

Essay idea

2009-04-08T22:59:00.002+01:00

Documenting my musings on ideas to write papers on - I have a multitude of prospective essay investigations, i just need to remember to remember them and then write it all down!!

Explore Games endings and their inevitable disappointment:
Games endings, in trying to be original, can leave the player feeling cheated. Unlike Film where an interesting plot twist or unexpected ending can be a credit to the film, endings to games are limited in outcome as the player invests time and emotion in the characters. If their time and effort appears to have been only for minimal reward then it may have a negative reaction from the player.

Antitheses:
An interesting plot that keeps the player engaged however is oft thought of as a holy grail. But to what extent does breaking conventions for dramatic effect counterbalance the need to please the player, and where does the game start becoming an absorbed media instead of a user-led experience??

ref:
Call of Duty 4, and witnessing your 1st person character slowly die and take no further part in the game.

Women in Games

2009-04-06T16:03:00.003+01:00

I submitted 2 logos for a website re-design competition.
www.womeningames.com
I think i can put them on here.

rough screen of our game in progress

2009-03-10T00:45:00.001Z

http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f219/Rhys4247/?action=view&current=UniBuild.png

Image taken out because it was too big. Hosted elsewhere.

Can I be one of those names future games design lecturers encourage their students to remember?

2009-02-12T16:57:00.005Z

A seminar today really drove home something I've been thinking about a lot recently - There is so much theoretical investigation still to do within the developing games industry. I think I'm finding that progressively more mentally stimulating than the painfully slow procedure of implementing an idea in a game environment.

Don't get me wrong, I still find the generation and development of ideas the main draw to my overwhelming creative side; i will always get a buzz from doing or dreaming up something original or moving, and I shall encourage it to encompass my life. But with academic writing there is that added chance to produce new game development principles, touch on issues never before written about, and help rationalise a media that is finding its feet. Of course, I'll do both. Neither shall be taken in isolation, and writing about my musings will allow my practical output to be at the leading edge.

Epiphany! I realise that my path within games design is not set to one specialist area, i am not exclusively a character designer, nor a level designer, nor a concept artist, nor a modeller or animator. i don't think i would be able to stick to one specific thing even if i wanted to. I like to express ideas that usually encompass several diciplines. I am a designer, i should be able to apply best practice to all of them. To mix, filter and combine. Develop progressively, inventively and meter out the creative tether of each.

It's okay, im nearly finished with my self-obsessed ramble, not much more.

I love being a designer! I've noticed that a designer's outlook on life is so much deeper than the majority of the population's. I love it when i can hear and interpret my mind working independently of my body. My mind is always analysing, imagining, interpreting, complaining and thinking of what i could do to fulfill the want for self-fulfillment.

I just wanted to put all this down on 'paper' to take it off my thoughts and let more take it's place.
Its been a good day!

work in progress

2009-02-07T22:26:00.002Z

I'm working on a logo for a competition a website is running. Its on the role and integration of women in games play and games design.

Here's an initial idea:

Going to change the colours i think.

Tilt-Shift Tryout

2009-01-26T16:42:00.005Z

Attempting some tilt-shift on the hotel I stayed in on holiday.

...and a bit closer

enjoy

Something I Love

2009-01-17T13:04:00.000Z

Since a young age I've been interested in fine detail, miniatures and models - the inevitable airfix kits as a little'un aided that. I also love Marco photography for the same detail reason.

So this ( http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift-photography/ ) is a technique I've been keeping an eye on for the last 3 years (since i first came across it), saving the best onto my computer and trying out a few myself. Tilt shifting is the act of tilting the focal lens so it throws different parts of the photo out of focus and can make life size objects look like amazingly detailed models. Its cool stuff and I really want to play around with it in an interactive space!

some actual work

2009-01-17T12:38:00.000Z

My sketch book has been handed in for marking, so preliminary sketches are unavailable for a while, but I'll put up some stills from the many working project files:

Playing with the toon function in maya.

Headphone design.

The environment, train station, train and large glowing billboards.

There's some to be going on with. Ive just started getting to grips with maya, so things are quite rudimentary but its amazing fun. Will post some characters and rigs soon...i rendered them as jpegs and they look shocking.

regards

Im back and in dire need of a holiday (again)

2009-01-15T21:34:00.002Z

Hello hello hello

Finally back after a pretty busy festive period. All work and little play has been the unfortunate work ethic of late. My group partner and I have had to work on the uni project over Christmas. I had an unavoidable trip skiing in Bulgaria. Bulgaria is a beautiful and i think underrated country, rural areas are stunning and the people friendly enough. a few pics from my travels:

On the work front, we got it done and handed in. It was a struggle i admit, i got back from Bulgaria, and had a day and a night with Brendan to compile all our assets. We managed it though and im pleased with the outcome, its something very much outside my confort zone.

It features a CG character wearing headphones on a train. Music starts (we went with Vivaldi's summer), the CG world around her dissolves and she falls into this music transient state where she is a plastercine stop-motion character. Running, action, and movement are timed with the crescendos as she stuggles to outrun buildings closing in on her. They finally meet at the climax and drag her back to the pseudo-real CG world.

Expect rendered stills, short rendered tester films, character walk cycles and dev sketches up soon. The final film will then be posted...when i get get the file size down from 900mg.

2009-01-15T21:20:00.000Z

What music to have for our piece?

about 30-45 seconds of classical music, rich in strings and pace that starts quietly and crescendos near the end. A surprisingly difficult task and so much music to look through.

-Debussy i LOVE! very emotional, some parts quite lively and bouncy but maybe lacking body as pianos are prevalent

- A few great classics we looked at, Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky its so hard to find 30 seconds with the right properties we want, and i think in Tchaikovsky's case, a few pieces were almost overused in popular culture.

-I think we are erring towards Vivaldi the four seasons. And i think we have narrowed that down aswell to either summer or winter.

2008-12-09T20:04:00.001Z

http://www.maninthedark.com/

2008-12-07T16:58:00.000Z

If you have time, i would definatly suggest having a look at my housemate's blog:

http://stephen.banksie.co.uk/research/

It has many great references for the graphic design oriented artists.

And this is amazing:

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

2008-12-01T12:33:00.000Z

It's going to be an exciting week!

Bruno and Ruth from Igloo are coming in to pass on their expertise through workshops / demos / critiques. Check out http://www.igloo.org.uk/

These 2 are the artists behind their some very interesting environments, treating the 3d space as a performance area and flipping the preconceptions of games on their head. Their most recent work; Swan Quake has elements of motion capture dance within its level.

http://www.swanquake.com/interview.htm - gives a good indication of their intent.

We get a chance to try out motion capture equipment and have a crash course in unreal modding. Should be very exciting!

~Exceed false limitations~

2008-11-28T11:25:00.000Z

Quick-ish sketch i did earlier this week:

I definatly need to get back into traditional drawing of a more polished nature. My thought and idea development sketches are very quick and rough. I think i need to find a finer balance between a quick sketch to convey a point and a nicer looking drawing that shows some element of skill.

2008-11-27T20:26:00.000Z

a bit of summer work:

A Background

2008-11-24T18:51:00.004Z

A little more about me (its an easy subject): -

- I studied a random concoction of subjects at 6th form; Physics, Product Design, Computing and Archaeology (firefox apparently spells archaeology without the 'a').

- I passed all of them yet couldn't see myself going into an academic area of study. Drawing on my creativity (excuse the pun) from product design, I went on to do a foundation diploma in art and design.

- I found a creative way of thinking that changed me. That one year blew my mind.

- Finishing that, I got onto the games design course at Newport Uni.

- And a distinction in my first year set me up nicely for the start of the second.

Right, some images soon, I promise.

To set the scene

2008-11-24T17:54:00.000Z

Jeez, its a cold one this evening.

Whilst I'm recovering with a mug of hot chocolate from a rather chilly walk home, I thought I would start documenting my second year at the University of Wales, Newport. Now the wheat has been separated from the first year chaff, things get interesting.

Hopefully, this will become an outlet to share my findings, influences, successes and realisations with anyone that wishes to know. My first finding being that firefox wishes me to spell 'realisations' with a 'z'. This is unacceptable, yet gives me something to pad out this first post with. For that, i am gratefull...thankyou firefox.

To outline my current area of work; I'm creating a contemporary short animated vignette that shows off a game design of our imagination. Initial concepts have been drawn up and I shall share some images eventually.

Also, expect the odd bit of backdated work - theres always things floating about on my hard drive.

There we go. Wasn't too painful.