Well the site was put up for auction at about 12 today, I went to town for a couple of hours and when I got back someone had offered the Buy It Now price of $299! Pretty good going. We’ll wait and see if the deal goes through.

UPDATE – The site is now officially sold at $299.

Here’s what I’ve been doing recently. I think I’m ready to start designing now. If I give myself ample time to design and make it then I can refine and polish as much as necessary and hopefully come out with the best possible final outcome. I still want to look at practitioners and the ‘crazy contraptions’ Andy touched on in todays lecture, but that can be done later in the process.

Some of the images are work I’ve revisited from past sketchbooks which I felt was appropriate.

“Using your own personal experience write a few lines that describe how a personal contact has provided a creative opportunity for you”

‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. I’m a firm believer in that statement because of my personal experiences. A good example of this occurred recently when I was in the process of setting up my blog flip project. I went online to look for guidance and found some excellent forums at siteflipu. This is where I became acquainted with Neal from NotaBeneConsulting. Over the last two months we’ve been in contact by phone and email to discuss the project and how to move it forward. Neal has since offered me other creative opportunities after seeing my portfolio. Recently he needed a logo creating for a website he owns, and this is something he usually outsources. In this instance he offered the work to me instead. It was only a small project, but bigger things may come of it. I’m soon to be mentioned in a case study article over on his website, and a link to my websites will be included. I could get loads more work on this back of this article.

Since creating Neals logo about a week ago I’ve been offered work to create a logo for GroovyChicago and four other websites from the same client. I can already see a web of contacts beginning to grow! It’s a lot of work to do on top of University projects and my part time job but it’s worth the stress. Oh yeah, I also got my part time job thanks to my Dad knowing the manager of the company. That opportunity isn’t at all creative…

When you start to actually observe the world it’s strange the things you find interesting. In general most of us will go from place to place without really observing what’s going on around us. Waiting at the bus stop the other day I saw a leaf, surrounded by a dark brown stain on the slab. I thought about Roma’s assignment to “interview objects” and this seemed like an appropriate image.

Click for full size

Click for full size

I’m not really sure what it was that made this stand out to me. It happens on all pavements at this time of year, there was just something interesting about this leaf dying and decaying, crumbling in to the slab. When I looked closer at the photos I appreciated the finer details. The moss growing in between the slabs and the small pieces of dirt. I could see the texture on the concrete, it’s a bumpy surface made up of thousands of tiny domes pushing out from the surface. It’s a cold texture, a dull and uniform gray which we walk over every day. It has a matte finish as well, with no glossiness or reflective properties. In a certain light, with a wet surface the slabs can display a sheen however.

Click for full size

Click for full size

These photos were taken by me on a trip to Prague and while they’re not pictures of the city I live in, they’re good examples of interesting textures. You can see the bricks close up and in the context of the entire building. From a distance they appear to have a 3D effect, but on closer inspection they’re flat. The details on them create the effect, similar to a bump map that you’d use in 3DS Max. They have a coarse texture similar to sandstone or limestone. Like the slabs they have a matte finish as well.
I appreciate the importance of being observant when working in a creative way. If you pick up on finer details you can create more believable and interesting work. Work with character.

I spent a while just fiddling around with this morning. It’s difficult to set the perspective and scale correctly. Even harder is getting the lighting right and reflections in the plastic. I think I’ve done a pretty good job. Maybe I’ll revisit this image next term after my lighting compositing skills have come on further.

Click For Full Size

I’ve got a whole load of things going on at once at the moment, and I’m just about keeping it together! Here’s what I managed to get done yesterday. What do we have here? A timeplan which goes week by week, as well as a Ghant Chart which plans my time over the entire project. There’s some research in to games, ideas for my games and my initial thoughts on the project.

I’ve been looking at the references listed in the project Briefs for the board game projects. Most of it has gone in to my sketchbook, but I thought this video could go up here. I know there’s another scene where Harry is playing Wizards Chess himself and all the pieces are animated. In this scene however Harry is inside the chess game with live full size pieces.

The set for the this game of chess is what makes it interesting. It’s dark and musky and you know there’s something brooding about the pieces. Chess is a game of skill, but here you sense the violence within the live chess pieces. Flames are flickering in the background to heighten the feeling. It’s a good reference point for both Roma and Andy’s projects. If anyone can find the other scene please let me know in the comments section. I’m also looking for the scene from Starwars that Andy spoke about.

When I got a free moment yesterday from doing Uni work I got this logo done.

Click to see it in action

I’m not getting paid for this logo as I offered to do it for free on a trial basis for a web developer. He’s pleased with the outcome and I should have some more logo/graphic design work coming my way soon. Maybe soon I’ll start charging a small fee for my work.

Here’s what we did with Andy today jazzed up a little. I’ve got my ‘ball in a box’ render as well, but I’m not really happy with how it looks right now. Maybe I’ll add that tomorrow when I’ve brushed it up a bit. I had a look in to squash and stretch to see how that affects the ball. I’ve also added in some rotation as the ball rolls out with forward momentum.

**For some unknown reason this video isn’t playing the correct file in some cases**

Click To See Larger Image

I can remember first seeing Portal about a year ago when the previews were around the net. I was hyped at the time and I was dead set on buying the game. It looked original, quirky and fun. So what happened? I think it was a mixture of Bioshock, Halo 3 and Call Of Duty 4 that killed off Portal for me. Now I have Portal in my hands I’m ashamed I didn’t get it sooner.

Again the Half Life 2 engine shows how excellent it is. Take a look at the screen above to see how the graphics are holding up. The physics are still some of the best after all this time too. More importantly everything feels polished when you play a Source game. You can ramp all the settings up to max on a mid range PC and still have a good experience. What makes Portal fun is the game play. Solving the puzzles and using the portals is a bit of a brain exercise but I’m just happy to not be mindlessly shooting for once. The last time I had this much fun with a game was when I got Bioshock.